SQL Server is learning English?

Slowly

FORTRAN has simpler syntax

Might flatten the learning curve

If that's the goal, of course

Which it probably isn't

@PaulWhite pattern matching. 😒

Regex[p]es are not far behind, one might imagine

I guess everything were a mistake

They really should have killed the first person who tried to sort seashells.

Morning

@jcolebrand I'm no consultant, just a mere DBA, but here are my two cents.

Morning

Why not have the schema definitions in the program? When a version 0.9 of the application starts (for the first time), it goes along and checks the database according to some internal or external (txt file) information to determine if the current version of the database is compatible with the application.

If not, the application will trigger a mechanism that updates the database to meet the requirements of the 0.9 version of the application. Subsequent applications logging in to the database perform a simple version number check in the database and will start faster than the first application that connected.

This concept allows for a wide distribution of different versions of the application, which can be updated from version 0.9 directly to 1.2 or in smaller increments, because the current definition of the required database (schema) is distributed together with the verison of the applicaiton. Either in the applicaiton or in a supplied text filetion.

Works on Citrix (central database), Stand-alone (single seat), Stand-alone (centralised database), Docker images, etc.

It doesn't work if you have different versions of the application running in the same location connecting to a centralised database. Here you will have to have some application packaging and distribution in place to ensure that all clients connect with the same application version of the central database OR you disallow older applications to connect to the database if the version does not match the required database version.

@jcolebrand this discusses a similar procedure: docs.gitlab.com/ee/development/database/…

@jcolebrand Morning is this dbms-specific? I.e. SQL Server? If so, a common way of automating schema updates is via Microsoft's sqlpackage.exe with a model of the desired database state. At app setup, you spawn sqlpackage to bring the database into the desired state.

We use it for applying changes to QA/UAT/Prod regularly.

A chairde - Morning all!

@JohnK.N. I'll turn that comment into an answer this evening - fair enough? :-)

@ErikDarling Ah, yes, the infamous shell sort.

grug think boog no guess what shell rock under. grug bet boog four mammoth boog wrong.

@Vérace Thanks.

Morning

Either a happy non-camper or an unhappy camper.

The abundance of bugs rarely makes a happy camper.

Campers are thereby requested to apply debugging solutions.

@JohnK.N. There are a number of problems with allowing an app to deploy its own database changes at runtime, some of which are outlined here: EF Core - Applying Migrations - Apply migrations at runtime

That's specific to EF Core and migrations, but most of them apply more broadly.