Besides the more common approaches that were discussed previously, the following tips and approaches might help with reducing the amount of work in dealing with databases, or help reduce the risk associated with making database changes.
Other approaches and concerns
Minimizing the influence of databases
A first step in dealing with databases can be to reduce the chance that a database change has to be made. In many databases, it is possible to write stored procedures—or some other code or script—that executes within the database engine. While stored procedures come with some benefits, changing them can also count as a database schema change, or at the least result in changes that can be difficult to test.
One...