Manage Your MySQL Database with Rails' Migrations

Over the past ten years, I've created and managed perhaps hundreds of MySQL databases, and in the process have used all manner of tools for facilitating the process. Among my stable of preferred tools include PHPMyAdmin, a web-based table and data manager, and even the MySQL client, a command-line interface that helps you get the job done quickly and with minimum distraction. Yet I'm a programmer at heart, and not a database administrator, and accordingly I've always thought there was an unnatural disconnect between code and database management. Why can't database structures be managed much in the same way as code, programatically and using revision control? Why must multiple development tools be used for a single application? This luxury has never really been possible—that is, until I started using Rails. Rails' migrations feature was expressly built for this purpose, turning my disdain for database management into pure delight.

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