Schema upgrade tool (Beta sites)

• Request for Alpha/Beta sites for Schema Upgrade Tool. *

Powercase Ltd are looking for alpha/beta test sites in the south east of England for a new software product "SchemaControl", which aims to simplify and automate the management of schema changes/upgrades and the migration of data required by such schema changes.

Initial versions of the product are planned to provide the following capabilities:

• Detailed reporting of all differences between two schema’s, for schema objects including tables, views, indexes, synonyms, grants, procedures, triggers etc.
• The ability to upgrade an older version of a schema to a newer version. Where this requires data export and re-import, then a high-speed parallel unload is performed together with a parallel load using SQL*Loader (using direct load where possible), allowing fast upgrade for even multi-gigabyte tables.
• A powerful backup tool allowing full or partial, hot or cold database backups to be performed to multiple disks or tapes in parallel, including support for raw devices and datafile compression. This provides the required data security to allow full rollback of changes performed during schema upgrade.
• Schema descriptions in the form of appropriate CREATE statements that allow full creation of an empty schema.

Later versions of the product are planned to provide further version control capabilities, to allow schema changes to be captured, recorded and associated with a specific revision level, allow upgrades/downgrades of a schema to specific revision levels, and ultimately allow integration of schema version information with software version control packages.  

Powercase are looking for sites to act as alpha and beta test sites, with initial alpha versions becoming available early in the new year. To qualify as an alpha/beta test site, the site should match the following criteria:

• Be based in the south east of England.
• Be experienced Oracle users, familiar with Oracle software development and schema control issues.
• The ability to utilise "SchemaControl" for an existing or planned development effort, but NOT on a production system. Database sizes should preferably be in the range 1-5 Gb.
• Systems should be UNIX based (preferably Solaris) and use Oracle v7.0 or above.
• Allow dial-in modem access for problem resolution purposes.

Any sites that consider that "SchemaControl" could help in their development and support efforts, and that match the criteria above should send an email to Chris Lamberton at Powercase via CompuServe (100645,2721) or via the Internet (100645.2721_at_compuserve.com).

-- 

Chris Lamberton
Powercase Ltd
(100645.2721_at_compuserve.com)