Installing, Creating Database, Updating Schema?

Hi there,

I have a database on my test machine that will need to be installed on users
machines. I would like to create the database with the given schema on the
users machine and also with some suitable default values in the tables. I
note that although I can script the schema so that re-creating the structure
of the database is simple on the users machine, I cannot script the contents
of the tables also (automatically). What I would like to do is take some
kind of "snapshot", save it as a script and then run this script in my
installer. Are there any tools available to do this?

Secondly and related to the above: if I subsequently make changes to the
database schema (adding or removing columns, altering, adding or removing
stored procedures etc.), how do I roll out those changes to a customer? Do
I need to hand code an "upgrade" script, or is there a tool that will
produce a "difference between" script I can run on the customers machine?

Thanks for any tips you can give me about this.




Robin