Yes indeed. A rather touchy subject for me 🙂

Our deployments used to be handled by DBAs. We would do all the database changes in a way we could manage and we bcode was pretty easy to roll out via a copy paste type scenario. Basic but whoever was doing it knew what they were were doing.

Recent developments in web code design plus the way we manage database deployments (namely via TFS and powershell scripts) means that the DBAs, that now have to deploy, know a lot less about the deployment process and things like the DB changes are wrapped up in a TFS deployment package. Whilst I see the benefits of this, it MUST work correctly and I guess our process is not working right. We find a simple deployment of say a few changes requires a complete schema compare and removal of any adhoc processes such as replication. I think this could work better but our hands are now tied by the development dept.

In my experience I find that these newer "black box" type deployments leave me and who ever does them feeling rather sceptical and indeed nervous.

What these newer techniques have resulted in are the requirement of a deployment team rather than one or two individuals. Not sure if that is good/bad, efficient/inefficient. All I know is that now we approach deployments with far more fingers crossed than I feel is necessary

Graeme