CI/CD in database-centric environments

CI/CD (Continuous integration / delivery) is practice of getting changes merged into existing code repository and delivering them safely and quickly, in sustainable way.CI/CD has traditionally been plagued with additionally set of problem for databases. First and foremost, existing data must be accounted for and shouldn’t be compromised.In database – centric application environments, like Oracle, we cannot just replace application with new version, but instead we deploy on current application state, and have to take into account dependencies between application and schema objects and sequencing issues related to that.Some of the problems have been alleviated by efforts made in last decade, namely with releases of new tools and integration between existing ones. Oracle has been active participant and has recognized developer’s needs for better tooling with advancement in tools like SQLcl.We’ll discuss how database developers can use version (git) and database (liquibase) control tools, along with integration systems (GitLab) to manage CI/CD process.We’ll also look at how container technology (Docker), being exploited by the ever-growing list of tools and systems, can be used to assist database centric development.