Tom Jowitt has posted his third part in his "streamlined PHP development" series today focusing on working with databases and setting it up with your automated deployment system (parts one and two).

In the first two parts of this series we covered setting up the server and an introduction to Phing. This post will cover managing our database code with dbdeploy and Phing.

He points out that there's no "silver bullet" when it comes to automated database management but he's found dbdeploy as a good tool for his needs. He includes the configuration changes to get the database login information into Phing and a few new targets/tasks to add to the Phing configuration for initializing the database and applying patches.

On the Buildmeister blog there's an article detailing a setup for an automated project deployment process using Phing, dbdeploy and FTP.

A "well defined" build and deployment process (supported by a number of key tools or scripts) can often help reduce errors and increase the quality of delivered applications. In comparison with other languages, the PHP community has been somewhat slow in implementing build, deployment, code inspection and testing tools, however there are now a sufficient number available that have reached maturity.

They walk through what each tool is, how to configure them to work with each other and even on different environments (different development areas). Some configuration files and settings are included. The database deployment (with dbdeploy) is slightly different but can still be hooked into Phing and include a logging system (to a database table) for any updates.