Tuesday, July 6th, 2010
As the role of databases and related systems becomes increasingly important in facilitating operational excellence for today’s businesses, companies are seeking new ways to boost the productivity of their database administrators (DBAs). With the average DBA spending as much as 80 percent of their time on routine systems maintenance, many companies want to empower them to devote more effort to more strategic technology initiatives.
One task that takes up a tremendous amount of time is the creation of merge scripts for deployment between environments. For example, when unifying different versions of a database, potential conflicts must be located and addressed. Performing these actions manually is not only time-consuming, it is highly error-prone, often resulting in the need to rollback changes, and start over.
Traditional compare and sync tools can also be ineffective and unproductive, producing shallow results or incomplete information that forces the DBA to conduct further investigation. They also lack flexibility when it comes to handling conflicts and deploying changes.
A next-generation database change management solution, dbMaestro TeamWork™, includes a unique and powerful Merge Wizard, unlike any other available in the database world today. This three-way compare and merge tool provides deep analysis of all changes – including revisions to database objects – with relevance to previous versions or reference environments. TeamWork will not only deliver detailed insight into all modifications, it will recommend appropriate actions for handling each change. And, if conflicts exist, it will dynamically detect them and alert the DBA, and suggest the best possible resolution based on the available information.
But, most importantly, once all issues have been uncovered, and the best way to handle them has been defined, TeamWork will automatically generate merge scripts in just a single click of a button, saving DBAs tremendous time and effort and dramatically increasing their productivity. That time can then be used for more strategic tasks, such as conducting performance reviews, or other activities that will directly impact user satisfaction.
For more detail on our three-way compare and merge tool, and what makes it so superior, read our post titled “Three-Way Analysis and Merge: Advantages vs. Traditional Compare and Sync Tools”.
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Monday, July 5th, 2010
Software configuration management (SCM) solutions provide a wide array of benefits for companies across all industries. In fact, a survey performed by industry analyst firm Forrester claims that companies who don’t use automated SCM solutions, and instead choose to manage software changes in a manual or ad hoc fashion, experience problems such as poor software quality, dissatisfied customers, higher IT costs, and loss of business continuity due to production downtime.
But, software change management is particularly important for insurance and finance companies, for a variety of reasons. Perhaps the most important is the Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX). First, there is Section 404 of SOX, which applies only to publicly-held insurance companies, and calls for them to prove the effectiveness of their financial reporting processes and related infrastructure – including software systems.
Then, there are SOX provisions that have been adopted by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), and incorporated into their Model Regulation Requiring Annual Audited Financial Reports. This holds privately-owned insurers accountable in much the same way as public firms when it comes to financial reporting.
SCM can help ensure SOX adherence in several ways. It can proactively prevent unauthorized changes to those software applications involved in the financial reporting process. It can allow insurance and finance companies to establish formal, enforceable procedures and workflows for software change and administration. And, it can enable organizations to create detailed audit trails of all solution modifications, from the time they are requested, until they are put into production.
Health insurers face even greater challenges, as they must not only comply with SOX and NAIC rules, but also with HIPAA and other privacy guidelines. Software configuration management helps them overcome the obstacles associated with governing those systems that facilitate the collection and exchange of sensitive patient information.
Another, although less critical driver for software change management in the insurance and finance industries is cost-cutting. The marketplace has become highly competitive, and companies are aggressively lowering premiums to attract new business. Yet, in order to maintain profitability, they must reduce overhead expenses to offset the reduced income. SCM solutions have been proven to help minimize total cost of ownership (TCO) by accelerating enhancements, improving IT productivity, and eliminating errors and re-work.
Contact us to learn more about SCM and database management software, and the value it can provide to today’s insurance and finance companies.
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Thursday, July 1st, 2010
Now that you’ve learned how to configure database version control, dbMaestro TeamWork™, to work with IBM Rational Team Concert (RTC), we will show you how to link your TeamWork projects to projects within RTC.
From your dbMaestro TeamWork Management Studio console, select “Options” from the top navigation bar, and click on “CMS Settings” in the drop-down list that appears.
When the pop-up window displays, enter the name of the RTC work item that should be updated upon check-in actions under “Field Name”. Be sure to use plain text only. Note, if this field is left blank, RTC work items will not be updated. Click “OK” when you’re finished.
Next, right-click on the schema you want to link the RTC project to, and select “Link to Change Management Project”. When the pop-up window appears, choose the project from the drop-down menu, and click “OK”.
In the tree in the center of your TeamWork console, highlight the objects you wish to work with, left-click, and select “Check in Object Definition”. When the pop-up window appears, note that the “Assign to Changeset” drop-down has been enabled, and contains a list of RTC work items retrieved using the query specified in the “Query” drop-down.
The “Query” list defines and displays the changesets/tasks you will see upon check-in. To change the query used, open the “Query” drop-down menu and pick he “Select Query” option. The following window will display all available queries. Select the one you want, and click “OK”.
The list of changesets will automatically update on your Check In screen. Select the appropriate RTC work item from the drop-down menu, and click “OK”.
Go back to the tree in the center of your TeamWork Management Studio console, where your objects should still be highlighted. Left-click on each object individually, and select “View History”. The pop-up will display the history of changes for the selected object. Any database changes linked to an RTC work item will include the item name, as well as the name of any related RTC project. Close the window when you’re finished reviewing the history.
Next, click the database in the tree in the center of your console, and select “View History”. When the pop-up window appears, select the “Changesets” tab at the top. Here, in the schema history, you can review which RTC work items have linked database changes. You can also see the specific database changes associated with each work item. When you’re done reviewing the schema history, close the window.
Next, open the RTC application, and select “Work Items” in the top navigation bar. In the side navigation bar, choose “Open (Current Sprint)” under “My Queries”. All queries will display in the center of your screen. Click on a specific work item to view its details. For example, the screen will indicate if an RTC work item was updated upon check-in in dbMaestro TeamWork. You will also see those database objects that were changed from directly within the RTC environment.
Note, it is a best practice to add a custom field to RTC work items specifically for database updates.
To view the video tutorial on linking RTC projects to dbMaestro TeamWork projects, check out the dbMaestro “How to” video collection on our Web site, or visit our YouTube channel.
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