The Automation Toolkit is required for full process automation as it enables the command line and API to be used for the entire product suite. When the DB Ghost tools are incoporated into daily or continuous build processes the full power of the DB Ghost approach is realised. For example, if the Builder was scheduled to run after every check in (of SQL code) to your source control system then the entire development team could be notified within minutes that something is broken. As whoever 'broke the build' has only just checked in their changes the issue would very likely be swiftly resolved as everything is fresh in their mind. Contrast this with discovering broken code/dependencies at deploy time or, even worse, during the test cycle. The Automation Toolkit is simply a license that enables the command line and API functionality for the Database Change Manager, Data and Schema Scripter, Packager and Packager Plus applications.

Features

• Enables command line execution of all tools
• Enables API to be used for fine grained control over the Change Manager engine

Using the command line

The command line options are simple for the Change Manager - you simply create a "session.xml" file using the GUI (look for session save facility in the Change Manager) and pass that in as the single parameter. If you need more control the run parameters in the session.xml file can be easily modified on-the-fly. For example, if you wished to update several databases to the latest code level in an overnight batch run you can start out with a standard session.xml file and perform a string replacement on the <targetserver> tag in the file before each execution of the Change Manager.

Using the Application Programming Interface

Using the API it becomes easy to implement:

• Multiple database builds
• Deployments to hundreds of servers
• Audits of live databases against source controlled baselines
• Easy replication of data and schema to remote servers