Database Change Management

Hello All,

We recently went through a round of layoffs and being one of the survivors I have inherited a project from one of my former peers.

He was always busy with it, but could never adequately explain why. Well, now I know.

He has been manually managing database patches for seven different environments each with about 15 schemas.

The database is Oracle 11g on a RAC configuration. Each patch to the database has a unique ID. But the development team wants different patches applied at different times to different environments.

I am about 100% sure that this kind of problem is not unheard of and I refuse to believe that it has not already been solved, but I do not know how or with what it has been solved.

Can anyone enlighten me as to how to automate this little slice of hell? :)

Thanks,

Craig