Lack of Database Deployment Automation Creates ‘App Downtime’

An abundance of manual processes—that introduce “many” steps that can fail—is hindering database deployments, according to a recent survey from Datical. The resulting report, titled “The State of Database Deployments in Application Delivery,” indicates that the lack of database deployment automation negatively impacts app production. In fact, bottlenecks caused by database deployment problems hold up app release cycles by no less than four weeks for many organizations. Other database-related issues include app crashes and performance failures. More than 300 development, release management and DevOps pros took part in the research. This slide show features survey highlights, with charts provided courtesy of Datical and Dimensional Research, which conducted the survey.

The vast majority of survey respondents—86 percent—said that it’s difficult to accelerate the database deployment process. In fact, 40 percent said it’s either “very” or “extremely” difficult.

When asked to list top challenges in accelerating the database deployment process, 55 percent of respondents said they struggle with a “very” manual process with “many” steps that can fail. The next most-cited challenge was the lack of tools to automate the database deployment process, as cited by 53 percent of the respondents.

More than nine of 10 respondents feel that increased automation in the database deployment process has the potential to accelerate overall app release cycles. More than seven of 10 believe this automation can help developers more quickly find and fix errors in database changes too.

Two-thirds of respondents said database deployment automation can reduce app downtime due to fewer “bad” database changes. Three of five said this automation can improve app performance.

More than seven of 10 respondents said that out of the last 10 times that they made a significant app change, at least five required a corresponding change to the database. Nearly one-quarter said this happened eight or more times.

Nine of 10 respondents said their development organization is under pressure to release apps more quickly. However, database releases that create bottlenecks are holding up app release cycles for no less than four weeks, according to 48 percent of respondents.

When asked whether their enterprise has experienced app production issues due to database change errors, 84 percent of respondents replied “yes.” These issues include crashes, performance issues and downtime.

Only 19 percent of respondents said they can find and fix database change errors that create app production issues in less than an hour. One-fifth said this takes at least two days, if not a week or more.