Redgate has upgraded its Source Control for Oracle tool so that it version-controls static data within databases as well as database schemas.
According to Redgate the additional capability is was added in because as the speed of software development increases, version controlling code is becoming as important for databases as it is for applications.
Version 4, which has just been released, stores and shares reference data such as lookup tables and meta tables, enabling them to be version-controlled alongside database code.
While it represents a small change, it is significant, the company notes, because everything necessary to update an Oracle database from its current state to the desired state can now be handled with the same version control platform used for applications.
According to Doerte Letzmann from Redgate’s Product Division, this has been a widely requested feature because development teams want to optimize the way they update both their applications and their databases. Using the new feature, Source Control for Oracle can be used to deploy schema and static data changes within a single tool.
The functionality is already a popular feature in Redgate’s SQL Source Control tool and this update puts Oracle users on a par with SQL Server users—another major driver for the change, which was complicated by the difference between the SQL used by SQL Server and Oracle databases.
However, Letzmann said, while SQL Server and Oracle are both relational databases which use SQL coding behind the scenes, the flavor of SQL they use is slightly different. SQL Server uses Transact SQL, or T-SQL, while Oracle relies on Procedural Language SQL, or PL/SQL, which is more complex. As a result, he said, more development work was required to add the functionality to the Oracle platform.
With an increasing number of companies now using different database platforms to address different business requirements, the change provides more flexibility since developers can now, for example, move between SQL Server and Oracle and still work with tools they are already familiar with.
In addition, if companies choose to standardize their approach to database development by, for example, introducing DevOps practices such as version control, they can do so across both SQL Server and Oracle databases, and have every team working in the same way.
Redgate’s State of Database DevOps Survey, released earlier this year, found that 80% of companies and organizations will have started applying DevOps practices to their software delivery within the next 2 years. With this upgrade of the Source Control for Oracle tool, whether SQL Server or Oracle—or a mixture of the two platforms—is deployed by an organization, it can still be included by starting the journey to DevOps with version controlling the database.