Create a Sql Server Db from WIX in a specific location - sql

I'm trying to have WIX create a database in a location the user specifies. I've got it working for the most part using some CustomActions and passing parameters to a sql script. But am having problems with permissions on the directory I'm attempting to create the DB in.
Searching for a resolution to this problem lead me to a post on here that I had not seen before today (Wix: create a sql server database at a specified location) where it seems like someone accomplished the same thing I'm wanting to do.
It is not clear from that post how the user was invoking the script? I am hoping they were doing something like the code code snippet below and I just don't know how to pass values to the script. If so, that would greatly simplify my task.
<sql:SqlDatabase>
<sql:SqlScript>
</sql:SqlDatabase
Can someone tell me how to pass values to a SqlScript when not using a customAction to invoke the script via sqlcmd.exe?
Thanks.

For the future reference of anyone else wishing to do this there are a couple of ways to create a database at a specified location. The simplest of which is using the wix tags that I did not know existed:
<sql:SqlFileSpec Name="DataBaseFile" Id ="mdfFile" Filename = "[DBDIR]TestDataBase.mdf"/>
<sql:SqlLogFileSpec Name="DataBaseLogFile" Id ="ldfFile" Filename = "[DBDIR]TestDataBase_Log.ldf"/>
This works perfectly as long as the directory that the database is being created in is not under "Program Files" or "Program Files (x86)". Both of these locations seem to have special permissions to them that don't allow SQL Server to create a database there. This theory can be tested by trying to create a database using Sql Server Mgmt Studio in a folder somewhere under Program Files and looking at the error that is produced. Which is something like this for me:
CREATE FILE encountered operating system error 5(Access is denied.) while attempting to open or create the physical file
I'm still trying to figure out how an installer can accomplish putting a database under Program Files as I'm sure it's been done before.

Related

Better sql lite gives error for the code written in migration file

Better sql lite gives error and stops executing further code written in .sql file for the migration. due to which we might have to perform\write manual code.
For Example
you have table x in db file.
you add column through migration .sql file which is not available in table x.
run exe, column gets added.
closing the exe
run exe again
Now you will find error for the column already exists and stop execution further for .sql content.
I found some issues like it also not supports 'IF NOT EXIST' etc. may I know the reason as I'm not much familiar with the Database things.
here is which I have used for the database and it's helper packages manager.
https://www.npmjs.com/package/better-sqlite3
https://www.npmjs.com/package/better-sqlite3-helper
Thank you for helping hand in advance.

How to deploy SQL script to clients

Our company is in the process of adapting TFS for source repository and project management. I am in charge of database part of the project. We are using SQL Server 2008 R2, Visual Studio 2012 and TFS Online. We have a database that is used by several of our applications. So far I have been the only one handling any change to this database. As the company is expending we are going to have multiple dev teams. So I am planning to save the database as as SSDT project to TFS.
At the moment I am maintaining my database like the following:
I have separate folders for UDFs, Stored Procedures, and Config.
Under these folders I have subfolders for each objects. For example, for stored procedures I have subfolders for each stored procedure which contains the SQL script to create the SP. The config folder contains any script similar to SSDT's post deployment script (for example, populating static data).
The SQL script contains code to drop the procedure and create it.
I have a c# app to concatenate all the SQL files into one single SQL file. Let's call it the FINAL script. When creating FINAL script I can specify version number which adds an update statement to update the version table on the database.
FINAL script is made available for customers to download and execute on the database. So the script mainly contains any add/edit to SPs, UDFs, and static data. It does not touch any existing data (data entered by user) in most cases.
As a newbie to TFS and SSDT I am not exactly sure how this can be done using SSDT/TFS or if there is better way of doing something similar. So far what I have understood about SSDT and TFS is:
I can import an existing database to SSDT project.
This will create scripts for all objects including tables.
I can easily do a publish of the database to a local server or to a server I have access to.
Things that seem confusing so far:
How do I supply clients with my latest update script? I am thinking of manually including the FINAL script to the SSDT project but there must be better way of doing it.
How do I publish the changes to a copy of the database without the loss of any user-entered data? My guess is when publishing the tables get created. I can take care of the static data but I am not sure how to handle data entered by users.
May be there is something fundamentally wrong in my understanding of this whole thing. That is why I am here... :)
You want to pull your DB into a SQL Project. Maintain all of your changes there. This tells your system what the schema of your database should be. From there, I'd generate the dacpac files (through building the project) and provide those to your clients along with having them install the SSDT tools that include SQLPackage. They can run SQLPackage to make changes to their database to handle the schema changes automatically. This will bring their database in line with your schema, no matter how far off it might be.
I'd also create a publish profile for them to use. This lets you control some of the settings.
You can choose to not drop any objects not in your project
You can choose to ignore users/permissions
You can set an option to not allow changes if there would be data loss.
You can wrap everything in a transaction so a failed update rolls back
If you give them a batch file to run, you can specify an output file or a Diff report, or have them generate their own script to do the update.
I blogged about this at http://schottsql.blogspot.com/2013/10/all-ssdt-articles.html
(or http://schottsql.blogspot.com/search/label/SSDT if that doesn't work well). That will take you through some basics of why you might want to use SQL Projects, creating them, maintaining them, and publishing the changes to an existing database.

What is the best way to manage "non-SQL Server" SQL objects within Visual Studio 2010?

Visual Studio has a Database Project for Sql Server. This has a number of advantages: it hosts configuration settings, and database objects in one place. The .sql files are part of the regular .NET solutions - visible in the Solution Explorer and editable in Visual Studio. And they have a mechanism for generating a deployment script. With each individual database object in it's own file, the tracking of changes and source control is greatly simplified.
Has anyone had any success with using Database Projects with "non-SQL Server" databases? We use Sybase - which uses T-SQL and is very similar to SQL Server so I'm hopeful.
Or is there an alternative approach? I guess I could use a standard project (.csproj) and call a custom commandline application as part of the post-build to convert the .sql files into a deployment script.
Any ideas would be welcome.
Thanks
OK, I'll answer my own question.
I added all of our SQL objects to their own .sql files within a Visual Studio .dbproj project. However, minor syntactic incompatibilities between the Sybase version of RAISERROR and the Microsoft version of RAISERROR caused the validation code built into Visual Studio to get unhappy. The problem with the database project was that this actually caused a compilation error - which basically made it into a show-stopper.
So I scrapped that idea and added the .sql files to a standard .csproj project file. I then implemented some custom code that would load all of the .sql files, and aggregate them into a deployment script when invoked. I added a call to the custom code to the post build of the .csproj file so that whenever it was compiled - it would output a deployment script - which works like a dream with our build server.
In order to get some of the benefits of the .dbproj, I looked into writing a full SQL parser, but was quickly discouraged by some of the posts on SO. Instead I did some rudimmentary parsing with regex - which got me a few cool features without a lot of effort:
The code could detect dependencies between the various .sql files, and add them to the deployment script in the correct order to avoid sysdepends warnings.
Where there were no dependencies, objects were ordered based on the object type (stored procedure, function, grant statement, etc) and then by name so that the resulting script was always ordered the same - which is very important if you need to diff two versions of the script.
The deployment script can figure out some of the required permissions, so I don't need to keep track of all of the GRANT statements.
Stored procedures that are in the database but not in the script can be dropped automatically - so I don't need to keep track of what state each database is in - we just run the script and everything is in the correct state.
We have a few stored procedures that our automated tests call that shouldn't be deployed. The code can detect these and include them in a Debug build and exclude them in a Release build.
The custom code also generates a diff script that determines what changes the deployment script will make to a database and prints them out. This allows the person who is running the script to get an idea of what it will do. For example, the diff script might tell them that no changes will be made - so they don't need to run the deployment script at all - which is kind of handy if it saves them logging in at 3am to take a database offline and take backups etc.
So the end result is that all of my SQL objects are in separate files making them easy to work with in Visual Studio and manage under source control. For the first time since I started this job, I can look at the history in source control and tell what files have been changed (before this we had one enormous .sql file with absolutely everything in it).

Visual Foxpro SQL Server - Can't find the Call to SQL server in Foxpro

My DBA's are saying my foxpro application or .DBC (Database container) are hitting SQL server but searching all the code can't find the SQL call (FMTONLY ON/OFF).
This is the SQL command being sent:
FMTONLY ON/OFF
Getting called 16260 times every few minuets?
Any ideas how to find this or what could be causing it, maybe my DBC file?
If you can't find it embedded in the .DBC, but not entirely sure its NOT in there, you can use a VFP tool to dump its contents to a .prg file... GENDBC which is in your installation folder of {VFP}\Tools\GenDBC\GenDBC.prg
Open your database, then run that program, it will cycle through all the tables, indexes, relations, connections, etc and generate the code corresponding to everything in it... You could then look at the output .prg file and see if something in there might be triggering what you can't see otherwise.

Making a SETUP file

I have a VB project that runs on SQL SERVER 2005, while making the setup file for it, how do I include the DB?
You don't
Typically you have a DB generation script that is run either as part of setup or as part of first run of application
You also need to consider migrations (changes to DB when new releases of your application are published)
Consider using MigratorDotNet or RikMigrations to solve these problems in a seperate installer/upgrade program if you are still using VB6
I disagree, you could include the database. Simply distribute the .MDF file with your application.
Of course, the setup application would have know how to attach the database to an existing SQL Server RDBMS.
Both methods given in the above answers will work. I have tried them both. However using a
db generation script reduces the size of the final deployment files considerably. I would launch the script on the first run of the application and not in the setup itself.
I will second jack on this one.
From my experience of using installs that require an actual database file tend to have more issues then when updating or on first install when running scripts. As jack mentioned another bonus is reduced file size.
You can create who database scripts by right clicking on the required database, and selecting the script database option. Note however this will only create the tables and fields and not replicate any data.