I have created a database schema file of a customers database. I want to compare this schema file to my database project i Visual Studio 2010 to be able to script the schema changes that needs to be done to the customer database in connection to the upgrade of our client program.
For filesize matters I want to use this schema file (23MB) rather than getting a full database copy (1352 MB when zipped) from the customer.
I have no problem comparing the Visual Studio project to the schema file (no error messages or warnings) but I find no means to get the resulting update script. The error I am getting when pressing "Refresh update script" is: "you cannot write updates to the target when you compare the specified types of schema models". All export options are disabled.
Of course I understand that I can't write updates to the database schema but that is not my intention - I want to run the update script on the database at our customers server.
Is there any way I can get out the update script?
Thanks!
I solved it by taking a few extra turns:
I created an empty database on our local sql-server.
I compared the schema from our customers database with the empty database as target in Visual Studio and updated the empty database with the change script created by Visual Studio.
I compared the updated database with the new database schema from TFS.
The new change script I got from Visual Studio was deployed to our customers database.
Hope this helps someone, at least I learnt from it (and will hopefully remember this until the next release).
Related
I work for a customer who has his own database management team and I need to deploy my new web application version within a SQL Server 2008 script (I am not in position to execute any actions on their systems). I can't back up myself their database and I'm not sure they'll do it so if I delete all data it's gonna be terrible.
Therefore, I'm looking for a solution to back-up if possible the database, extract the existing datas, execute the new statements of my script, and re-include the datas saved in the database.
It is possible to do this in a SQL server script ?
More generally, how can I safely update schemas and datas of a SQL Server database within a script without losing all data inside ?
PS :
Currently, I'm using in the dev environment the initial database schema and the newest. So, I use Visual Studio 2012 with Data Tools to make Schema comparison and generate the update script.
You start with a copy of the database schema with sample data against which you can develop and test.
Then you write scripts (perhaps with the aid of a tool like SSDT) that updates the schema to be compatible with the new version of your application, retaining the data in the database.
You deliver these tested schema modification scripts along with the new version of your application for the customer's administrators to test and apply to the target database as part of the application upgrade.
I am working on a visual studio web project in express 2013.
I also created a (localdb)\v11.0 data connection and added a bunch of tables and stored procedures.
My question is how can I check in this data to TFS version control?
The website project I am working on is already in TFS. I looked around and I see that I can add a sql project and then create tables and procedures which can be checked in.
Do I need to create an SQL database project and check it in?
If yes, is there an easy way to move the existing tables and procedures to the project?
Thanks
You can create a Database project using the SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT).
This project helps you in bringing tables, views, stored procedures and permissions under version control. After creating a new, empty database project you can choose to import the schema from an existing database. After importing the project you can make your changes directly in Visual Studio in the Database project and then update your localdb or the other way around.
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Importing an existing schema is only possible when your Database project is empty. After an initial import, you need to use Schema Compare to import further changes from your database into your project.
I'm beginning to use the SSDT tools in Visual Studio 2013. I've been using SSMS for 2008-R2. I've created my project from an existing SQL Server database and have made some changes to stored procedures and have dropped a few tables in my project. I've been trying to publish these changes to the database.
First, I've told the project to publish the changes straight to the server, which resulted in no changes in the actual database. I then told it to generate the script instead, however the script that was created contains no changes:
GO
USE [$(DatabaseName)];
GO
PRINT N'Update complete.';
GO
I then used the schema compare to compare the project to the database and told it to generate the script. All the changes were found and the script created has the changes in there.
Can anyone tell me why the schema compare and publish scripts would differ and why publish is not recognizing the changes?
Your help is most appreciated.
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.
I have created an application in VB.NET (using Microsoft Visual Basic 2010 Express) with a local database (SQL Server Compact 3.5 database) to store data.
I have installed this on the users computer, and added a "search online for updates" functionallity (which can be selected when publishing)
Now i have noticed, that sometimes when i upload a new version, the data from the database gets cleared. (possibly when i opened the dtb while developing)
This is offcourse not how i want the system to behave, and the data should always remain on the users computer.
In 'Application Files' the database file (*.sdf) is currently set to 'Data File (Auto)', but i'm unsure of the exact way this works.
Could anyone help me to understand how all of this works, and tell me how i can be sure that the data in the users database will remain, even after an update?
If there is no solution to ensure this, is there a way to safely backup the data and reload it?
Thanks in advance!!
Basically, the click one install overwrites everything in the program folder that is included in your publish. So if you include the .sdf then it will overwrite it when the installer is executed. What you need to do is select "exclude" on the sdf instead. This will keep the database in its previous state.
So my recommendation would be to have 2 different publishes. One that you create that contains the .sdf which is only used on first time installation, and then in all the update ones you exclude it.
To perform updates on your tables you would have to write the SQL for it in your software. Basically do a check on all tables to see that they have the proper setup on startup. If they don't then you add the missing columns.
Hope this helps.