Why Your Team Needs a Database Schema-as-Code Tool
The Evolution of Database Schema Management
In today's world, where software is developed and deployed at a rapid pace, selecting the right tools for your team is crucial. The right tools can help you move faster, be more productive, and reduce the risk of errors and bugs. Most backend applications are backed by a database, and maintaining the database schema is a critical part of the development process.
Our industry has seen many trends in the way database schemas evolve over the years. In the early days, DBAs would manually run SQL DDL commands directly against the database through a terminal. Then came GUI based, point-and-click database management tools that included schema editing capabilities.
In the early 2000s, we saw the rise of "database migration tools" that allowed developers to write versioned database upgrade scripts (usually in SQL), called "migrations", that would be executed by the tool itself. This trend was further intensified with the rise of DevOps and CI/CD, as it became the de-facto standard way for automating database schema management.