Change Manager 5.1 Now Available

Today Embarcadero Technologies published the 5.1 release of Change Manager our award winning (JOLT, SQL Server Magazine) database change management tool. The new version includes some pretty exciting new features so if you haven't yet upgraded or tried it out, I recommend you give it a whirl. Read the official announcement here if you're interested.

New in version 5.1 is:

• Data Masking to protect information in production when moving production like data to other systems such as test or development


• Cross platform schema comparison between Oracle and SQL Server schema objects


• Cross platform schema comparison between Sybase and SQL Server schema objects


• Automatically synchronize schema and data when running manual or scheduled comparison jobs


• Group jobs, scripts, and results in projects that can be stored anywhere on disk and shared using source code control third party add-ins

And as usual we've worked to make the product faster, more accurate, and easier to use. The entire team and I are immensely proud of this release, but the work doesn't stop. We're now planning our next releases for the autumn, so if there's anything you want to see in the tool, please let me know!

Of course Change Manager is a central part of All-Access our "single, cost-effective toolbox solution for developers, architects, performance testers, and DBAs."

Change Manager 5.1 is available for Windows and Linux and is free to try here. It works with Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, Sybase, and DB2 for LUW.

Data Masking with Change Manager 5.1

Change Manager 5.1 now includes Data Masking to move data while obfuscating the meaning of the original rows.

Here's how it works:

Change Manager and International Databases

If you've been following Embarcadero news you'll know that we're currently in the midst of a beta program for Change Manager 5.1. It's looking pretty good and we're getting lots of great feedback from our existing users.

This week we refreshed the beta with support for international databases which some may call a feature but I view as sort of a logical resolution of a previous omission. It's actually a surprising amount of work that went into this effort and we're looking for any and all feedback.

Here's a screenshot of the schema comparison results:

Change Manager includes tools to manage data, schema, and configuration between database systems.

If you work in non-English languages and need a tool like Change Manager you can check out our beta for free, just apply at http://beta.embarcadero.com. We'd love to hear from you!

Change Manager 5.1 BETA Release

I'm pleased to announce the release of Change Manager 5.1's BETA build available now on Embarcadero's BETA program page! As I mentioned before version 5.1 includes numerous enhancements and improvements over previous releases and we're looking for feedback from you!

Change Manager includes tools to work with database data, schema objects, and configuration settings on Oracle, SQL Server, DB2 for LUW, and Sybase. Change Manager lets you:

• Compare and synchronize database data, schema, and configuration settings between servers - in many cases between servers of different vendors (e.g. Oracle to SQL Server schemas)
• Capture archives and snapshots of schemas and configurations
• Mask data for privacy protection
• Compare and analyse to identify inconsistencies and resolve problems with data, configuration settings, and schema objects
• Integrate with source code control and version databases with application source code
• Automate via the command line for a lights-out repeatable processes

And it lets you do it all from one product that runs on Windows and Linux and comes as part of Embarcadero All-Access.

So, sign-up to get involved here!

Finally, a big thanks and congratulations to the entire team, folks in Iasi and Toronto, for all their hard work and passion over the last few months on this relaese.

Change Manager 5.1 BETA Sign up

Next week Change Manager 5.1's BETA release will be available but to get your hands on it you need to join Embarcadero's BETA site and sign up:

• http://beta.embarcadero.com

If you don't have an account, select "Click Here To Join" and create one. Once in the BETA site, you'll see Change Manager 5.1 listed right in the centre of the first page under "PROJECT OPPORTUNITIES". You can click to sign up, and when the BETA is ready you'll be notified and can access everything you need to get up and running through the site.

Here's a list of new features in 5.1:

• Automatically resolve schema and data comparison differences after the comparison runs
• Mask data to protect privacy when synchronizing data
• Oracle to SQL Server schema comparison
• Sybase to SQL Server schema comparison
• History of data comparison executions
• Project support so you can group jobs and scripts into projects and connect with various source code control repositories
• Email notification enhancements
• Alerts on the data comparison mapping page when tables and columns aren't fully paired and there's a possibility of issues (such as the target column being shorter than the source)
• Back/Next wizard actions on each job editor with instructions and setup feedback
• Full unicode support for databases around the world (coming in BETA 2)

5.1 has been in the making since January and the team and I are extremely proud of where the product's got to and are excited about where we want to go. Join the BETA and let us know what you think!

Change Manager is the Glue

Have you seen All-Access yet? It's our complete suite of tools from Ruby, Delphi, PHP, C++, and Java IDEs to adminstration and modelling tools for DB2, Oracle, Sybase, SQL Server, to our very own DBMS Interbase and holding it all together is the most awesomest product of all Embarcadero Change Manager. And here's why:

Do you use Delphi? or C++? If so I bet your coders develop against databases. Has one of these developers ever asked a DBA for access to a production database for testing? Have they tried to make changes manually to production databases to fix a bug or update a procedure or change an API? How do the changes made in developement make their way through QA to staging and finally to production? Do you version your databases with a release?

Do your QA folks ever ask what changes an application makes to a database as it's running? When the tester deletes the record - is it actually deleted? Are related records left dangling? How do they know just from the application interface?

Do you have database modellers using ER/Studio? Have they ever generated a script and said, update these ten or twenty or thirty production systems to match?

Do your database developers edit objects in Rapid SQL or DBArtisan? How do those updates get moved and tracked to all the production database systems? How do you know if they all match? If they were updated correctly?

Are customers complaining about performance problems in production? Is it a database problem? Are the lab systems for QA configured the same? Can you easily find out?

Change Manager lets you easily:

• Monitor for database changes
• Roll changes from one system to many other systems
• Move data between platforms
• Version schemas over time and rollback changes
• Find differences betweeen schemas
• Compare data between two database servers and platforms
• Track configuration settings on your database servers and enforce conformance to specific values and ranges

And it does all this with highly customizable, automatable, repeatable jobs with a flexible notification system so that you can find out what happens and when.

So if you do have All-Access, next time you load up the client toolpod, don't miss the Change Manager link. There's a reason it's right there smack in the centre.

And if you don't have All-Access, check it out, or at least take Change Manager out for trial spin.

Thoughts on Program Management

A couple of years ago Embarcadero introduced a new role called Program Manager loosely based on some Microsoft idea and a belief that folks in development need real focus on the needs of the user to create and ship useful software.

So, with the need for change clear, and some thoughts on what we'd do, three of us were promoted to the role and sent running. Nick and Ian have since moved on and two years later we've got a great team of folks doing this critical role; one that's still kinda fuzzy though. That I think is okay though, in some ways, because each of us brings our own passions and talents to the role and surround ourselves with people that help to build the great products we build and prop up our weaknesses and benefit from our strengths.

Anyway, one of my favourite QA folks Andrei in a little place across the Atlantic called Iaşi sent me this artical by Joel Spolsky about how to be a Program Manager. Finally, somebody has put pen to paper with some practical advice about this role:

   How to be a program manager
     by Joel Spolsky
     Monday, March 09, 2009
     "Having a good program manager is one of the secret
     formulas to making really great software. And you
     probably don’t have one on your team, because most
     teams don’t...." Keep Reading

It's definetely worth the read if you're at all curious about what we Program Managers do. Or, at least what he thinks we ought to do.