Why:
Can you still sleep at night after trying to answer the following questions?
If not, then you need to be using SqlTac!
General Items:
- What percentage of your domain knowledge has been documented?
- Can you find the existing document describing your domain knowledge?
- What is the estimated time, for your database architect to capture your domain knowledge?
- What will you do if the proverbial BUS hits your domain expert?
- How many lost Man-Months will be incurred for failing to capture your domain knowledge?
Existing database(s):
- How many man-hours have gone into designing your database?
- Has that extensive domain knowledge which you have spent many thousands of dollars and many man-months developing been captured?
- Is the current documentation in a form which is accessible and easily usable by others?
- Are there any SQL scripts to re-create your entire database?
- Have these SQL scripts been checked-in to source control?
- Can you tell what structural differences that were deployed in your latest version?
- Have those changes been communicated to the rest of the development staff?
Database(s) under development:
- A typical software project which utilizes a database will have 30 or more sets of changes in the first 3 months.
- Are code changes coordinated with the database schema changes?
- Are any of the changes checked-in to source control?
- Are the schema changes associated with a version number?
- How do you communicate these changes to rest of the development staff?
- Can developers quickly and easily create an empty database for testing purposes?
- How much time do your developers spend creating databases for unit testing?