BUILDING AN AUTOMATED DATABASE DEPLOYMENT PIPELINE

Grant Fritchey

Red Gate Software

Continuous delivery for databases

Goals

Understand the technology and process requirements to work towards automation step-by-step in your release pipeline.

Learn about the organizational changes necessary to support process modifications.

Appreciate why these changes are necessary in support of modern development and deployment methodologies.

grant@scarydba.com www.scarydba.com

@gfritchey www.linkedin.com/in/scarydba

Grant Fritchey

Product Evangelist, Red Gate Software

ALM – and where the database fits in

Three core processes in Application Lifecycle Management:

Governance Development Operations

Natural friction across pipeline

Development → Operations

Natural friction across pipeline

Development → Operations

Operations → Development

Why?

Development focus is on speed

Agile

Scrum

Lean

Feature-driven Development

Iterative

Operations focus is on production protectionprotection

Monitoring

Deployment

Integrity

Data Management

Databases as a bottleneck – historically

Odd languages

SQL

Cubes

X-Query

3 reasons why databases have traditionally slowed down

deployments:

Data persistence

Data outlives

applications

Data can’t be

replaced

DBA paranoia

Frankly…

1 2 3

A quick primer on continuous delivery

Common misconception: it’s about automating to Production

A quick primer on continuous delivery

Common misconception: it’s about automating to Production

In fact –

there’s a difference between three continuous approaches:

DevelopmentSource control CI server Test Production

Continuous integration

Continuous deployment

Continuous delivery

The goals of continuous delivery for

databases

Faster feedback on changes made

o Continuously integrate team changes

o Automated testing

o Releases rehearsed in testing environments before

deployed to Production

= repeatability, repeatability and

a strong team process for changes

Focus on the pipelineThink of the Toyota production system…

Start with Lean

o Focus on the customer, eliminate waste

o Continuously Improve

o Empower the team

o Optimize the whole

o Plan for change

o Automate processes

o Build quality in

SOURCE

CONTROL

CONTINUOUS

INTEGRATION:

FUNDAMENTALS

CONTINUOUS

INTEGRATION:

ADVANCED

AUTOMATED

DEPLOYMENT

Four key stages of the deployment pipeline

SOURCE

CONTROL

Greenfields

Existing systems

Test data

Four key stages of the deployment pipeline

Automate builds as first step

o Incremental

o Complete

Build library of manual tests

Automate testsCONTINUOUS

INTEGRATION:

FUNDAMENTALS

Four key stages of the deployment pipeline

Select CI tooling

Team discipline

Customization of build steps

Automate the testingCONTINUOUS

INTEGRATION:

ADVANCED

Four key stages of the deployment pipeline

Testing

Automation

Safety

o Backups

o Rollback strategyAUTOMATED

DEPLOYMENT

Four key stages of the deployment pipeline

Create development environment

for automationEmpower Development

Environment should let them work at their speed

Take part in Development Instead of stopping bad deployments, stop bad development

Automate your build process Supply clean production data or supply good sample data

Get started on writing tests Build your library

Different types of testing for different stages of the pipeline:

DevelopmentIntegration

TestingQA

Pre-Production/Staging

Production

Automate testing

Unit tests Integration tests

Automated tests

Deployment validation

Behaviour validation

Other validations

B C D

A

Always Be Continuously Delivering

Deliver

Every delivery is practice

Fail faster

But less frequently

Smooth the process

Testing, testing, testing

Select the right tests for each stage

Review and act on the results

Automate

DBAs must work with Devs…

Yes, you must protect the data for the business, but

that must be tempered with helping deliver functionality.

Changes to philosophy

Devs must work with DBAs…

Yes, you may know more about business needs,

so educate rather than isolate.

Changes to philosophy

Project Management must think of operations as part

of development…

Yes:

Deployment is part of development

Release 1.1 and on are part of development

o And planning for 1.1 is not premature optimization

Data retention is part of development

Changes to philosophy

Changes to workplace

SOURCE

CONTROL

CONTINUOUS

INTEGRATION:

FUNDAMENTALS

CONTINUOUS

INTEGRATION:

ADVANCED

AUTOMATED

DEPLOYMENT

Changes to workplace for continuous

database delivery

Empower developers to do more

Bring DBAs into development teams

Management must buy-in

Management must get out of the way

How are other companies getting started?

Case Study: Boxon

Global packaging and labelling company

Based in Sweden; sub-division in China

Three business areas: profitable packing

solutions; intelligent marking; customized

big-bags solutions for bulk handling

One developer responsible for ASP.NET

application with SQL Server backend,

enabling customers to control consistent

printing of labels wherever the print shop

is located in the world

Boxon – Initial Process

Deploying to production was scary…

Database changes not version-

controlled

2-hour window - at night - to

complete deployments to production

– difficult to find quiet period with a

global customer basePAIN

POINTS

Boxon – Improved Process Deployments are less scary now…

Tickets are logged and prioritized in Unfuddle(unfuddle.com)

Ticket numbers are logged in SVN and TeamCity to track items

Now use SQL Source Control and Subversion to version DB changeso Source of authority on database build

TeamCity (CI build server) is triggered on check-in of changeso Fast response – changes checked in frequently

Notification if build fails

Build packaged into a Nuget file for deployment

BUILDING A

PIPELINE

Case Study: Move with Us

Risk management solution and

sales and marketing channel

provider for residential property

businesses in the UK

Located near Cambridge, UK

Customers put a heavy load on

databases, so updates need to

be efficient

Move with Us – Initial Process

Database code often not checked in to VCS due to risk of conflicts –changes were communicated by email instead

Hot fixes sometimes done directly on integration server

1 day needed to release updates –a lot of work in building and testing

Problems with merging code led to a lot of firefighting

PAIN

POINTS

Move with Us – Improved Process

Each developer has a local copy of database

SQL Source Control and Subversion used to check in database changes to version control

TeamCity (CI build server) automatically compiles changes on check-in

Successful builds packaged into a Nuget file

automaticallyo Fast getting here – multiple database changes

checked in per day

Nuget package deployed to Test on demand

If problems detected, return to Dev to fix

BUILDING A

PIPELINE

Case Study: Practice Fusion

Web-based electronic health record (EHR) company

Founded in 2005

Based in San Francisco

Hosts over 50 million patient records

Used in all 50 states and by 150k+ physicians

3 DBA engineers; 1 data architect; 10+ developers

Practice Fusion – Initial Process

Hand-crafted SQL scripts - inconsistent

Database changes not always version controlled

Changes released by opening dozens of files in SSMS

Long-winded team comms if further changes needed

Smoke-testing deployments showed some objects had been deployed straight to Prod and weren’t in deployment script

PAIN

POINTS

Practice Fusion – Improved Process

SQL Source Control and Subversion to version DB changeso Source of authority on database build

Jenkins (CI build server) is triggered on check-in of changeso More time to develop; less time managing scripts

Build failed by Jenkins if problems detectedo Fewer issues deploying to production

Jenkins, SQL Compare and SQL Data Compare used to deploy changes to environments

Custom scripts for replication

BUILDING A

PIPELINE

Summary

Eliminate or mitigate frictiono Slow is smooth, smooth is

fast

Adopt lean methodologiesand focus

Four key stageso Source control

o Build automation

o Continuous Integration

o Continous Deployment

A-B-C-D

Change your philosophy

Change your workplace

Goals

Understand the technology and process requirements to work towards automation step-by-step in your release pipeline.

Learn about the organizational changes necessary to support process modifications.

Appreciate why these changes are necessary in support of modern development and deployment methodologies.

Documentation and resources

Continuous Delivery by Jez Humble and David Farley (Addison Wesley)

The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr and George Spafford (IT Revolution Press)

The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox (Gower Publishing Ltd.)

Agile Organization by the agile admin (theagileadmin.com)

Further resources:

Database Delivery Learning program: www.red-gate.com/delivery

o Patterns and practices on Simple-Talk

o Tutorials in Red Gate training academy

www.youtube.com/user/RedGateVideos - for recorded seminars

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