source control

Technical Article

Stairway to Reliable Database Deployments Level 6 – Managing Changesets Over Time

  • Stairway Step

As database changesets accumulate over time, they gradually become more than deployment artifacts. This level explores how a well-organized changeset library evolves into a replayable representation of the database’s structural history, supporting not only reliable deployments but also reconstruction, auditing, and long-term maintainability. Through practical examples and a real-world case study, it shows why maintaining coherent Create and Rollback scripts continues to provide value long after a successful production deployment.

You rated this post out of 5. Change rating

2026-08-05

612 reads

Stairway icons Database Deployments

Concurrency and Baseline Control: Level 5 of the Stairway to Reliable Database Deployments

  • Stairway Step

As database development scales across multiple contributors, concurrency becomes an inherent aspect of the process. Changes that are individually correct may still conflict when developed against a shifting baseline. This level introduces a disciplined approach to managing parallel changesets by controlling their scope, identifying overlap, and resolving conflicts through realignment. By ensuring that only one changeset retains its original baseline while others are adapted accordingly, deployments remain predictable and consistent. Once released, changesets are treated as immutable, and further evolution proceeds through new, forward-only changes.

You rated this post out of 5. Change rating

2026-06-24

1,111 reads

SQLServerCentral Editorial

Malleable Source Control

  • Editorial

Git has proved to be a better fit to the needs and workflow of a database development team than anything that came before. Git is valuable because it encourages branching and merging, giving more choice in the way that your team can work. Due to the ease with which you can adapt Git, there is […]

You rated this post out of 5. Change rating

2021-04-03

205 reads

Blogs

Accessing the Data API Builder MCP Server from VS Code

By

I recently started playing with the MCP Server for SQL Server, which is a...

From DBA or Data Engineer to AI Engineer: A Realistic Path

By

If you spend your days tuning queries, managing pipelines, or keeping a production database...

Asynchronous Replication of Snapshots from an ActiveCluster Pod to a Third Array

By

I’ve been rebuilding my three-site SQL Server demo lab, and I ran into something...

Read the latest Blogs

Forums

STRING_AGG DISTINCT

By Phil Parkin

Has anyone written a wrapper function (or similar) around STRING_AGG() to allow the retrieval...

In-place OS upgrade or migration to new OS?

By jasona.work

Putting this here as we're currently on SQL Server 2019 installed on Windows Server...

Never is Not the Policy

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Never is Not the Policy

Visit the forum

Question of the Day

Rebuilding All Indexes

I have added a few indexes to one of my tables in SQL Server 2025:

ALTER TABLE dbo.CustomerContact
ADD CONSTRAINT PK_CustomerContact
    PRIMARY KEY (CustomerID);

-- Create index on CustomerEmail
CREATE INDEX IX_CustomerContact_CustomerEmail
ON dbo.CustomerContact (CustomerEmail);
CREATE INDEX IX_CustomerContact_CustomerPhone
ON dbo.CustomerContact (phone);
I then do this to disable one index:
alter index IX_CustomerContact_CustomerPhone on dbo.CustomerContact disable
I see this when I check the index status:Index status for CustomerContactI decide to rebuild all indexes with this command:
ALTER INDEX ALL ON dbo.CustomerContact rebuild
After I do this, what will I see for the index status?

See possible answers