Who Needs Change Management?

  • Comments posted to this topic are about the content posted at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/GRobidoux/whoneedschangemanagement.asp


    Greg Robidoux
    Edgewood Solutions
    www.edgewoodsolutions.com

  • Hi there

    Interesting article, but lacks what the DBA's really need, that being change control templates , specific (point form) steps used in example environments and example security settings to control developers.

    I am very strict with change control at all levels, no matter the garbage you hear about "extreme programming", there is no place for slackness in development. Even so, there are levels of control to suite the particular environment as not everyone is running a train control system.

    Here is what I do:

    Development:

    + all db schema changes are made by dba only

    + db changes are documented and analysed by dba through change control form

    + db access via roles at all times, dba manages and communicates the security paradigm clearly and checks regularly during dev cycle. Nothing goings to test or prod without following the rules.

    + developers do get ddladmin and db_security db privs for managing their views and stored procs. All objs must, at the end of the day, be owned by DBO.

    + server admin access open

    + installation of SW on any box is documented via DBA

    Test:

    + change control form clearly documents schema changes

    + db backed up

    + changes applied, views/stored procs etc applied

    + app and db security privs are "what prod is like" to ensure proper testing occurs

    + server access is locked out to select few (senior analysts etc that manage integration and system testing cycles)

    Prod:

    DBA only.

    Strict dev -> test -> pre-prod (compile server, mirror of prod) before anh change is applied.

    All replace components are backed up before the change.

    There is a hope range of issues etc to cover, but just some thoughts to start with.

    Cheers

    Chris K

    http://www.chriskempster.com


    Chris Kempster
    www.chriskempster.com
    Author of "SQL Server Backup, Recovery & Troubleshooting"
    Author of "SQL Server 2k for the Oracle DBA"

  • Nice high level article and something that I completely agree with. You need a process for managing changes.

    Steve Jones

    sjones@sqlservercentral.com

    http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/sjones

    http://www.dkranch.net

  • Chris,

    Thanks for the great input. I wasn't sure how detailed to write the article, so I did a very high level for now to get people interested. I will follow this up with future articles that give more of the process instead of just the overview of why you would want to do this.

    Thanks

    Greg Robidoux

    Edgewood Solutions

    http://www.edgewoodsolutions.com


    Greg Robidoux
    Edgewood Solutions
    www.edgewoodsolutions.com

  • I have enough Daves to tell you if I could ever get agreement on the process of this I would love it. Usually the problem is fixing something breaks something else but the person who made the changes is here 7 hours after I leave and will be out of contact for weeks. Plus it is usually a typo that gets them. Anyway nice overview.

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    Edited by - skilledsoftware on 02/05/2003 07:24:26 AM



    sincerely,
    --
    Sebastian K. Zaklada
    Skilled Software
    http://www.skilledsoftware.com
    This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

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