Standardize & automate database projects and deployments

Enterprises with dozens to hundreds of SQL Server instances have been using SQL Farm Combine™ since November 2005. Read below to find out why...

SQL Farm Combine™ is a powerful development, change management, and code deployment tool designed to automate the database code release process Development (Dev) ⇔ Quality Assurance (QA) ⇔ Production
in small, mid-size, and up to very large SQL Server environments. SQL Farm Combine™ allows users to easily transfer projects between Development, QA, and Production and guarantees one-click project and rollout deployment on all databases and servers in each environment. To date, SQL Farm Combine™ is the only development and code deployment tool that fully automates the database project life cycle in both connected and disconnected environments.

SQL Farm Combine™ is designed to scale as it allows users to update, roll out and push changes to many databases and servers in parallel, execute multiple SQL scripts and deploy rollouts on multiple SQL Server databases and any number of servers simultaneously, and run distributed queries on multiple servers to return a single result set. Deployment results, scripts, data, text & graphical execution plans and other logging and audit records can all be saved into a single file and passed between different (including remote) users and environments.

Based on a distributed parallel database access (patent-pending) technology, SQL Farm Combine™ offers many novel features for developers, database administrators (DBAs), and QA engineers, including:

Code development and deployment Using SQL Farm Combine™ developers can collaborate and compose database code releases, organize all the code as projects, and configure projects for one-click deployment in Development, QA, and Production. Each project consists of SQL scripts, queries, or any other SQL and T-SQL commands. Each SQL script in the package is mapped to pre-configured groups of target databases on any number of servers, and the entire project is deployed by a click of a button against all the appropriate target databases and servers in parallel. Move projects between Dev, QA, and Production: One-click project deployment on all databases and servers SQL Farm Combine™ allows users to map groups of target databases in Development to a corresponding group of target databases in QA and in Production. Developers, QA engineers, and Production DBAs only need to configure the sets of target databases in their own environment, or can choose to store the mapping between all three environments. Projects are composed and configured once by the developers and are then transferred to QA engineers or Production DBAs & change managers. Projects are then deployed by a click of a button against all the appropriate target databases and servers in each environment without requiring any changes or reconfiguration. Moreover, before projects are deployed, QA engineers and Production DBAs can open the project, view and edit the package content and settings, and perform code reviews to validate coding standards and requirements. QA engineers and DBAs can also exclude scripts from the project, or only deploy the project on selected databases and servers. Optional auto-rollback in case of errors Using advanced built-in scripting features, developers can auto-generate the project code and configure it to automatically roll back the changes in case any errors occur during the project deployment. Save detailed deployment results and audit trail All changes made to SQL Server databases and instances are (optionally) stored in a central change-history repository for auditing, tracking, and reporting purposes. All auditing actions are performed on the client side, and have absolutely no impact on your SQL Servers. The tracked information includes all database changes, deployment and change time, who made the changes and from where, as well as all results returned from all databases and servers during the project deployment. Deployment results also include all data sets and records returned from target databases and servers, such as messages, warnings, errors, text and graphical execution plans, and all other relevant information. The audit trail and change history data are immediately available to users, can be saved to files, or searched using rich and advanced built-in interfaces. The tracked information and Change History meet requirements for all common auditing regulations, including Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), GLBA, HIPAA, PCI DSS, Basel II, and others. Command line deployment for application automation or automated builds SQL Farm Combine™ offers utilities to deploy multiple SQL scripts and projects from the command line against multiple databases and servers. Command line deployments are useful to automated the build process across all databases and servers, and to allow users to include database changes and updates in their .Net project releases. The command line tools are also extremely useful for application automation and allow Web servers or other custom applications collect data, query, or push code over groups of databases and SQL servers. Built-in scheduling and schedule management SQL Farm Combine™ allows users to schedule deployment of database code and scripts, as well as schedule data collection tasks. The scheduling features and schedule management are built in the tool, enabling users to easily achieve scheduled execution of database projects and code. Automated deployment notification SQL Farm Combine™ can be easily configured to integrate with SMTP servers and send deployment-status notifications. Combine can be instructed to send emails to inform users upon deployment completion, upon issues or errors, and can send attachments with details deployment results. Execute scripts & run queries on all databases and servers in parallel; Collect & aggregate data from many servers Combine users can run scripts and queries against multiple databases on any number of servers in parallel, or against a single database. With this feature, DBAs can create a job (or jobs) on multiple servers simultaneously, check job status, add a login or users to many databases and servers at the same time, query and retrieve data from many databases and servers, and so on. When distributed queries are executed against multiple databases, SQL Farm Combine™ automatically connects and executes the queries on all target databases and displays all results in a single result set. With these distributed querying capabilities, users can collect and aggregate data from many databases and servers in real-time, as well as save the collected data to one or more databases and servers. Integration with a wide range of source code control systems SQL Farm Combine™ supports many source code control (SCC) and change management (SCM) systems. In fact, Combine is customized and thoroughly tested with each system‡. Fully supported systems include: Aldon Lifecycle Manager (LM) Borland StarTeam CVS (via the PushOK API) IBM / Rational ClearCase Perforce Serena / PVCS ChangeMan Version Manager SourceGear Vault SubVersion (via the PushOK API) Team Foundation Server (TFS) Telelogic Synergy CM (supported to the extent of the Telelogic APIs) Visual Source Safe (VSS) 6 Visual Source Safe (VSS) 2005 Systems currently undergoing development tuning and QA testing: AccuRev - In Development Code Co-Op - In QA MKS Source Integrity - In development QVCS - In QA RCS - In QA Team Coherence - In QA ‡ If you are working with systems not listed above, or if you wish to know the status or release dates for the tools in dev/QA, please email us at support@sqlfarms.com. Easy configuration and maintenance SQL Farm Combine™ does not require a designated repository database. To make best use of the tool, users can configure the groups of target databases in Dev, QA, and Production by using a rich set of built-in configuration options and features. If users already maintain a repository database with information about the location and names of their databases and servers, SQL Farm Combine™ can be easily configured to retrieve the group settings by querying the repository. In addition, once a single person configures the target groups, these settings can be exported and imported by other users. Industry-leading intellisense and SQL code editing options SQL Farm Combine™ contains a built-in T-SQL parser, and contains intellisense and InfoTips support for nearly the entire T-SQL language. Intellisense include cross-database commands and statements, execution of functions and stored procedures, data retrieval and manipulation statements, object creation and user-defined data types, as well as common internal T-SQL commands such as DBCC and the PROPERTY methods (for example SERVERPROPERTY, OBJECTPROPERTY and others). Advanced database objects scripting capabilities SQL Farm Combine™ is based on .Net 2.0 framework, allowing it to take full advantage of the latest and greatest scripting capabilities recently introduced in Microsoft's Server Management Object (SMO). Using these built-in scripting features, developers can auto-compose code packages, detect and script dependencies, create rollout and rollback packages, generate scripts that automatically roll back all database changes upon deployment (i.e., rollout) errors, or utilize many other advanced scripting options. High-end automated code templates / snippets Code templates and snippets are available for SQL 7, SQL 2000, and SQL 2005. Code snippets are completely automated, enabling developers to easily replace keywords and snippet variables with user-assigned values. Furthermore, developers and DBAs can add their own templates to the collection of out-of-the-box snippets. Redistributable components for remote code deployment Users that need to deploy database projects on remote sites can use SQL Farm Combine to develop releases and code packages, and then ship their code with redistributable components for remote deployment on customer sites. For technical details and pricing, please contact our support and sales teams. Complete T-SQL language reference and context sensitive Microsoft online help Upon pressing CTRL+F1 to retrieve SQL and T-SQL help, SQL Farm Combine™ will direct the user to the precise help page on Microsoft's MSDN books online (BOL) site. Using this novel online help technique, SQL Farm Combine™ users are provided with the most up-to-date help files and documents, directly from Microsoft. With security in mind SQL Farm Combine™ is designed to be secure. Developers, QA engineers, and Production DBAs only need to configure the sets of target databases in their own environment. Moreover, users can choose whether to store user-credentials using strong encryption techniques or to require credentials to be entered at each use. Support for all SQL server versions SQL Farm Combine™ offers a complete end-to-end development, change management, and code deployment solutions for SQL 7, SQL 2000, and SQL 2005.