Database Schema Migration on Azure with Git Deployment

Question

I am looking for a means to use Git deployment on Windows Azure together with either their MySQL or other database solutions.

I need a means of migrating database schema changes as part of deployment - does Azure provide support for this without using Visual Studio or .NET.

Answer 1

You basically want to use Azure as a Continuous Integration (CI) platform and my view is that Azure by itself just isn't there yet.

A basic git based CI scenario would involve the following steps.

1. Your src code and any database schema/data updates are pushed to a central git repository like GitHub. [Feature available]
2. GitHub would then push the updates to Azure. [Not supported in Azure until they support GitHub hooks]
3. Azure compiles and deploys the code. [Supported]
4. Azure updates the database from sql files pulled from the repo (remember, this needs to be automated). [Not supported]
5. Azure reports any error in running the database or web application. [Supported]
6. Azure runs user provided integration tests to check more thoroughly specific functionality and reports the status of those tests to the user [Not supported].
7. Azure allows you to roll back to a previous deployment snapshot [Partly supported. Snapshots are not based on git commits for instance].

I might be wrong on some of those points or new features might be added since I've written this. Corrections are very welcomed and I'll try to update the list accordingly.