In order to help you get up to speed more quickly when you have an existing database, SQL Change Automation provides the baselining step in the initial setup. Baselining uses a snapshot of your database's schema to provide a starting point for migration development. This allows you to create new databases containing the schema of production.

SQL Change Automation supports two baseline formats:

• Baseline scripts - A migration script containing a baseline schema matching your production database.  If you deploy a project to a database that is not empty, it will not run the baseline script.
• Using a SQL Clone image as a baseline - A virtualized copy of your production database including data

Creating a baseline

Creating a baseline is an optional step when setting up your project. We strongly recommend creating a baseline when you intend to deploy your project against an existing database. This step is unnecessary for a greenfield project. 

Baselining in the wizard is a read-only process and no changes will be made to the production database.