Versioning Databases

IM received this morning:

Morning young man. Do you know of anywhere that I can get hold of best practices for stored procedure source control?

My response was to recommend checking out the series of articles on this subject by K. Scott Allen. They’re in my del.icio.us bookmarks at http://delicious.com/ianfnelson/databases+alm

For .NET developers with MSDN premium licenses, achieving this through the use of Visual Studio 2008 Team System for Database Professionals is the obvious way to go. Since the start of October, this Team System SKU has been available to anyone with the Team System for Developers SKU (see Soma’s post). An updated, General Distribution Release, is due for release soon, and as usual GertD has been blogging frequently about the forthcoming enhancements.

Alternatively, I know of people who swear by Red Gate Software’s SQL Toolbelt suite, in particular the SQL Compare tool, which is available from just £245.