It does mean you need to treat your data schema and functions as code. My short checklist for doing database centric development (postgresql centered): * Data

It does mean you need to treat your data schema and functions as code. My short checklist for doing database centric development (postgresql centered): * Database schema is kept under version control ( essentially all the DDL for a given database is kept in one place and managed as a unit ). You can use `pg_dump -s` to extract the schema from an extant database. * data types and functions are kept in separate files under version control * the database is built and filled automatically for tests, for migrations and for upgrades. Shell script, Makefile, Chef; the tool doesn't matter so long as the process is repeatable and automatic. * data fixtures for testing are kept separate from the code ( own repo usually, since you want to be able to add edge cases and errors to the test database ). * migrations on the production database are run immediately after a backup. Nothing too fancy, just basic hygiene. But staying on top of that means you're ready to do things like build your application onto a new set of machines; or make drastic changes to how your data is structured. There are a number of tools that do much of the scutwork for you ( South for Django, ActiveRecord::Migration for Rails, etc.) but the tools are not a substitute for understanding what your database is doing.