Versioning and Change Management

SchemaBank provides version control and management for your database projects.

Working Copy vs Committed Version

A working copy is the current working environment that you make changes to your database project. At any time, you can commit your working copy as a version; except while you are accessing a shared project in which you don't have privilege to commit to a version.

A version is a read-only snapshot of your database model, which is stored for future retrieval.

To Commit a Version

Click on the Commit working copy button on the menu bar.

Contents under these tabs will be committed as a new version:

• ERD Pane
• Text Objects
• Options (only the settings under the Database Related section will be committed)

Contents under other tabs will not be stored into a version. Instead, they always belong to and are saved to the working copy.

To Retrieve a Version

Select from the drop-down list the version you want to retrieve.

You will be presented a read-only preview of the retrieved version. You can then start exploring the retrieved version.

If you decide to edit the retrieved version, click on the Replace my working copy with this version and start editing button.

If you want to discard the preview, click on the Return to my previous working copy button.

To Edit a Version

The fact is, you cannot edit a committed version. Because a committed version is a read-only snapshot of of your project. 

However, you can retrieve a committed version and load it into your working environment for editing. That means the retrieved version will be loaded as a working copy. 

Thereafter, any changes you make to the retrieved version (under the working copy) will not be reflected in the corresponding snapshot inside the version manager. 

Of course, you can save the edited work as usual and then commit it to a newer version.

Version Comment

You can provide comment when you commit a version. You can also edit a version comment anytime afterwards, under the Version Manager tab, by clicking the comment field of a particular version.