On 11 Sep 2002 at 9:37, Tickerboo Support wrote:

> Hello
>
> I'm developing an application and a client is currently running the
> beta (alpha) release. In the meantime, I'm continuing to develop the
> applciation and (slightly) changing the database structure. What's
> the best way off making those database changes to the client's
> database whilst retaining their data?
>
> I've thought of comparing the two database structures and creating an
> SQL script containing a lot of ALTER statements (time consuming) or
> writing an application to extract their current data and pump it into
> a new database. Can any of these two options be automated?
>
> I would have thought that this is a common problem, what's the
> standard answer? ;-)
>

I send the client two files, changes.sql and database.sql, the client has been trained
in how to use some of the database tools, and can either run the changes.sql file to
update the existing database, or run database.sql to build a completely new
database. It depends on how smart your client is, if the client is pretty smart then
you can send them the changes as a script, and let them apply the script, in other
cases you might use a dialup and a tool like PCAnywhere to connect to one of their
machines, and apply the update yourself.

Creating the files can be simple, I create them using cut and paste, but there are
programs that will do this as well.

Paul Schmidt, President
Tricat Technologies
paul@...
www.tricattechnologies.com