A case study from Grant Gaudette

Synchronized database teams with SQL Source Control

When your business tailors code to individual clients' needs, it's important to track what's going on. But what do you do if your development teams work in two different offices?

That's the situation faced by Gaudette International, a custom-build software developer with teams in San Francisco and Fort Collins. They've turned to SQL Source Control to keep their development databases in sync.

Grant Gaudette, the company's President explains:

Each of our offices has a different business role, which makes communication between the two more critical and more of a challenge. SQL Source Control is crucial in helping us keep track of who changed what and why.

Both teams work with .NET and SQL Server, turning the same stored procedures and databases to different ends. San Francisco is responsible for Essette, the company's flagship healthcare software, tailoring it for clients' business rules, while Fort Collins builds specialized products to individual customer specifications.

Inevitably, when two teams are working on diverse products with the same tools, one can introduce a breaking change for the other. This can cost hours of time and become very expensive.

For Gaudette International, that's where SQL Source Control comes in handy:

To me, it's a great management tool because I know we can roll back someone's database changes without the hassle of restoring a backup.

In the past, there've been many times when a developer changed a stored procedure drastically and we didn't have a roll back script. Working with SQL Source Control, I have real peace of mind.