Product Components
Before going on, I’d like to provide a brief explanation of each component of the software. The tool consists of the following components:
- Management Service or the SQL change manager server
- SQL change manager console
- SQL change manager Repository
SQL change manager server
The server part of the software is implemented as a Windows service and acts as an abstraction layer between the Console and the Repository. Once you’ve successfully installed the software and have granted this service the required permissions (at least Local Admin to the computer hosting the service), you hardly notice that it is there and you can almost forget about it. It isn’t your main interface anyway.
SQL change manager console
This part of the software is the main user interface (the GUI) you deal with. From here you perform all actions the software can perform. Almost all screenshots you will see later on in this paper are taken from this Console and for the sake of simplicity I will refer to this part from now on as the “console”.
SQL change manager Repository
The Repository is a SQL Server database that stores all information needed by the software internally to function properly. That includes configuration settings and management plans along with schema snapshots and activity logs for reporting purposes. Idera SQL change manager does not install anything in the master database, nor does it use any custom extended stored procedure on the SQL Server monitored by the tool.
When you launch the SQL change manager console for the first time, you’ll see the above screenshot. This is the main user interface. It is well organized and intuitive. There are two main panes where most of the actions take place. The right pane is called the “tree pane” and the left pane is called the “view pane”. These terms come from the online help. I will use them also here to avoid any misunderstandings.
SQL change manager only does its magic on SQL Server instances that have been registered with the software. So the first thing I do is register my server.
In order to do so, you can either use the link from the bottom of the view pane as shown above or
you can use the context menu of the tree pane.
In the “Register SQL Server Wizard” you specify the login credentials that the Management Service should use to connect to the SQL Server instance. Now we will move on to the handling of change management for SQL Server databases.
I’ve created two databases with these names on my server:
- My_Idera_Dev_Database
- My_Idera_Live_Database