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Embarcadero Change Manager

Respond Quickly to Change Without Downtime or Lost Data

In today's fast-paced business climate, database administrators must be able to adapt quickly to change. In addition to daily tasks such as monitoring database performance, installing software upgrades, and managing security issues, database administrators (DBAs) must also track and manage changes to database schemas across a distributed environment. This task is made more complex and problematic by a number of factors, including multiple DBMS platforms, frequent application version updates, shorter application development cycles, and the ongoing shortage and growing expense of skilled IT professionals.

Embarcadero Change Manager enables database administrators to archive, compare, synchronize, and migrate application schemas on Oracle® , Sybase® , Microsoft® SQL Server and IBM DB2® Universal Databases. It enables DBAs to respond to application changes while avoiding data loss and application downtime. Embarcadero Change Manager also offers powerful job notification capabilities, comprehensive HTML-based reporting facilities, and tight integration with other Embarcadero database management and development tools.

Embarcadero Change Manager automates and streamlines the complex and error-prone task of maintaining application database schemas on multiple platforms. Using a common interface for all supported DBMS platforms, Embarcadero Change Manager leverages the skills of experienced DBAs and developers while guarding against mistakes, potential data loss and application downtime. Embarcadero Change Manager also generates comprehensive and accurate SQL scripts to assist in the deployment of schema changes to one or more target database catalogs.

Compare, Capture, Archive, & Synchronize Permissions

Embarcadero Change Manager always captures the permissions that are granted (or revoked) from each database object. Beginning with version 1.4, you can also compare permissions between live database catalogs or between archive versions. This allows you to quickly identify unauthorized granting or accidental loss of database permissions. Once a comparison job that includes permissions is executed, those objects (including users) whose permissions have changed will be visually displayed in the Embarcadero Change Manager Comparison Window. The changed permissions can then be rolled back (or forward) with the click of a button.

The Embarcadero Change Manager Capture Facility takes a snapshot image – or version – of a database schema (or database schema subset), and stores this information within an off-line archive. An archive is a file-based container for one or more versions. Each time a capture operation is executed, a new version is added to the associated archive.

By putting the resulting schema archive file on a central (backed-up) file server and running regularly scheduled capture jobs, Embarcadero Change Manager will act as a logical backup facility for your database schema. This enables you to compare and/or restore the definition of any database object to an earlier version.

Compare Facility

The Compare Facility analyzes the differences between database schemas, and optionally generates SQL synchronization scripts and HTML-based reports. It checks for the existence of database objects, as well as DDL differences between database objects. There are three comparison options available:

Compare Live Datasource to Live Datasource - Compares the catalogs of live databases between like platforms (e.g. Oracle to Oracle). Comparison operations can be run on single or multiple target databases at the same time.
Compare Archive to Live Datasource - Compares a specific version of a captured archive to a live database catalog on a like platform. Comparison operations can be run on single or multiple target databases at the same time.
Compare Archive to Archive - Compares different versions of captured archives on like platforms under the same or different database. Comparison operations can be run on a single target archive.
The Compare Facility has two output modes. The graphical output option displays a drill-down comparison results window when the comparison operation is complete. The file-based output option has no visual output. Instead, the comparison result reports and SQL synchronization scripts are sent to files.

Migration Facility

The Migration Facility enables you to copy any set of database object definitions from a source schema to one or more target databases. Although this facility is similar to that found in Embarcadero DBArtisan, it differs in that it allows the migration of schema archives and supports multi-target migration operations.

Two types of migrations can be specified. The first, catalog-to-catalog, migrates live database catalogs with the option of moving table data. The second, archive-to-catalog, migrates a specific version of an archive produced by the Capture Facility to one or more database target catalogs.

A unique feature of the Embarcadero Change Manager Migration Facility is its ability to copy tables, data, views, indexes and users between databases of different vendor types. For example, it can copy Sybase database objects to an Oracle database, and vice versa. This powerful capability is available for both catalog-to-catalog and archive-to-catalog migrations.

Scripting Facility

Embarcadero Change Manager features a powerful scripting facility that allows DBAs to view, edit and execute scripts against any target database. The scripting window has numerous productivity features to assist in synchronizing and restoring database schemas. In addition to basic batch execution capabilities, the scripting facilities offer step-execute (previous batch, next batch, skip batch), bookmarks that can be set, database error reporting and platform-specific syntax highlighting.

Notification Capabilities

Embarcadero Change Manager offers job notification capabilities to multiple recipients via e-mail and the Microsoft® Windows Net-Send facility. Default notification values can be set up using the application option dialog, and then used globally when defining new schema jobs.

Embarcadero Change Manager will send notification of the completion of any job, indicating a successful completion or failure of the job, along with the elapsed time taken to execute it. It can automatically create HTML-based comparison reports and mail them as attachments with any job completion notification mail.

Embarcadero Change Manager creates several types of neatly formatted and comprehensive HTML-based reports. They include:

Schema comparison reports, which can be generated after the ad-hoc execution of any comparison operation or after scheduled comparison jobs, and subsequently mailed as attachments to multiple recipients.
Archive version reports, which produce complete documentation of a schema at any point in time.
Migration error reports, which contain comprehensive information about errors that take place during the migration process.

DBMS Support

Embarcadero Change Manager supports the following database platforms and versions:

• Sybase System 11.9.2 & 12.x
• Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 & 2000
• Oracle 7.3, 8.x & 9i
• IBM DB2 Universal Database Version 6.x & 7.x

System Requirements

• Windows NT Version 4, Windows 2000, Windows XP
• 128 MB RAM
• 50 MB hard disk space

Notes: To perform scheduling functions, Embarcadero Change Manager requires Microsoft's Task Scheduler to be installed on the same computer.

Embarcadero Change Manager does not require the installation or maintenance of a separate database repository. Similarly, Embarcadero Change Manager does not create or require supporting tables, procedures, etc. on your databases.