<Dictionary Based Database Upgrades ⁄ >

The number one search term that brings people to this blog is "data dictionary." So this week I will begin a series on how to use the data dictionary to improve your own productivity and reduce errors.

Building And Upgrading

This week we are going to see how to use a data dictionary to eliminate upgrade scripts (mostly) and make for more efficient upgrades. The approach described here also works for installing a system from scratch, so an install and an upgrade become the same process.

The major problems with upgrade scripts are these:

* They are the least-tested code in any system, and are the most likely to break. If a script breaks and anybody but the original programmer is running the upgrade, this leads to aborted upgrades and upset customers.

* They are horribly inefficient when a customer upgrades after a long time: the same table may be rebuilt many times as script after script adds a column or two.

By contrast, a dictionary-based upgrade can take any customer from any version of your software and in the fewest steps possible bring them completely current, with no possibility of broken scripts.



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