How do you maintain revision control of your database structure?

Question

What is the simplest way of keeping track of changes to a projects database structure?

When I change something about the database (eg, add a new table, add a new fie

Answer 1

Poor mans version control:

Separate file for each object (table, view, etc)

When altering tables, you want to diff CREATE TABLE to CREATE TABLE. Source code history is for communicating a story. You can't do a meaningful diff of CREATE TABLE and ALTER TABLE

Try to make changes to the files, then commit them to source control, then commit them to the SQL database. Most tools poorly support this because you shouldn't commit to source control until you test and you can't test without putting the code into SQL. So in practice, you try to use SQL Redgate to compare your files to the SQL database. Failing that, you adopt a harsh policy of dropping everything in the database and replacing it with what made it into source control.

Change scripts usually are single use, but applications exist, like wordpress, where you need to move the schema from 1.0 to 1.1, 1.1 to 1.5, etc. Each of those should be under source control and modified as such (i.e. as you find bugs in the script that moves you from 1.0 to 1.1, you create a new version of that script, not yet-another script)