This thesis attempts to explore ways an administrator might automate this pro- cess and provide some insight into building tools to help make this process easier, faster and more reliable. The thesis makes the following contributions. First, it provides a complete system implementation, Ratchet, that a database administrator can use to perform efficient schema evolution on supported platforms (PostgreSQL). The system uses various techniques such as improved fine-grained locking and a delayed- copy strategy to improve its schema evolution performance. Second, it analyzes the characteristics of schema evolution for a five-year period for Wikimedia, one of the most widely used websites. Third, using Ratchet, the thesis recreates five years of schema evolution automatically. Finally, the thesis provides a mechanism of rollback in schema evolution.