Patch process questions?

[jrjespersen]

I've been applying the 4.4.1 patch to our systems and have a couple questions regarding the patch process:

• Can we patch the database independently of the application patch process through the web browser? Ideally, what we would like to do is execute the patch SQL script with a privileged account without having to raise the application's account to dbo privileges (we lowered the app user privileges after initial installation).

• Aside from modifying the *.sql files in the Install directory, is it possible to separate the patch with the current version of the application?

It would be great for us if the database schema changes (for both initial installation and upgrades) could be executed outside of the documented process without causing an error in that process. Our team of DBAs have established practices for application databases such that we don't have an exact out-of-the-box installation of Checkbox. The practices I know of are not using the primary filegroup, not running the application as dbo, and using mirroring for failover - I'm sure there are more that are unknown to me. If not possible in current version, make it a feature request for 4.5 or the version after?

[pwiesner]

The upgrade process is not designed to be run manually. I will add your suggestion to our feature request tracker.