I'm new to using SQL Server 2008 DB Project's in VS 2010. I found a good intro to setting them up. It's nice how they create Tables, Stored Proc's etc as objects. But is it also a limitation?
I want to use this project to manage 1 stored procedure (for learning). I do not want to import the entire database because 90% of the database is stuff we do not manage.
I created a new project without doing the import process. I then added a new stored procedure. Now I am having difficulty getting the thing to build. I'm getting various errors saying that I have unresolved references to objects.
How can I add a new stored procedure..build it and deploy it to the database? Is it possible with this kind of SQL project or do I need to drop back to the old, simple type of SQL projects that VS 2008 and below used?
Update
According to another post, support for the Database Project type is gone. Support for my situation appears to have been erased.
UPDATE 2 3/21/2012
I installed MSSCCI which allows me to use SSMS directly with TFS 2010. I no longer needed and found the setup process to be unmanageable for a large database SQL 2008 project. Especially when you only manage a small % of the DB.
You can Partition a Database Project by Using Partial Projects. This allows the database project to know the entire schema of the database, at the same time, you need not maintain the entire schema. You can work with the subset of the database that's under active development, for instance (or the subset which is your responsibility), yet the project knows the entire schema. This permits it to create change scripts at deployment time, by comparing the schema in the project with the schema in the target database.
You must import all schema objects referenced by your new stored procedure. But this can become a large task because every referenced object need all it's references too.
More trouble with linked server objects.
Related
I've created an SQL Server Database Project so that I can capture my database schema and add it to source control.
My problem is that the database contains Views which reference external databases. Given the business and project environment, this is an acceptable solution in the short tomedium term.
Sadly, this stops the database project from compiling, (since it don't contain the external database tables).
What are my options for getting around this error? I'm currently storing the schema in a single generated script, which is a pain to update.
Look at creating dacpac files out of the external databases and add them as database references. I did that by using the SQLPackage command line to generate the file, put the files in a "shared" folder (optional, but useful if this pattern persists with other projects), then add a database reference to the project. I recommend removing the variable for the DB name unless it can change in different environments. I blogged a bit about this here:
http://schottsql.blogspot.com/2012/10/ssdt-external-database-references.html
Now if it's a truly breaking change, I've done this through post-deploy scripts. Drop/recreate the view and reapply any permissions necessary. That's not ideal, but it can work.
I need to include a Stored Procedure in Visual Studio 2013 which references another Database which is not part of the solution. I only refer to a very small portion of the external database which is itself big and complicated.
I know I need to add a reference to it so that I don't get warnings when referring to objects within the external database from within the Stored Procedure.
Adding that Database to a this or another Solution is not an option as its not part of our solution and importing that creates a whole variety of other issues.
I can see in older versions of Visual Studio that I need to create a schema file using VSDBCMD but this has been replaced by SQLPackage, but I can't see how to access that and whether it will need the external database anyway.
I've been going round in circles on this, so some pointers would be warmly welcomed.
I realize I am late to the party on this but perhaps it will still be useful to someone: You don't mention if this is a c# project or a database project.
I'll assume database as I not sure how you'd get errors otherwise on the internals of an SP.
The only way I know of to remove errors on cross-database references is to add the other database as a project in the database solution, add a database reference to the project with the sp, and then instead of using Database.schema.table syntax in the sp change it (in the database project) to [$(database)].schema.table
Alternately, a DACPAC can be created on the referenced database and used instead of referencing the database in an added project.
I'm new to this stuff myself, but I work with a lot of database cross-references in my sps so I am working through how to address this in database projects
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.
In my database project, I have added a reference to a linked server. When I use this linked server in a view and try to build my database project, SSDT reports errors because it cannot understand references to any of the schemas referenced on the linked server:
[LinkedServer].[DB1].[dbo].[Table1]
The above would returns an error that SSDT cannot decipher the reference to [DB1].[dbo].[Table1]. I tried to add a reference to this database, but SSDT required either a .dacpac file (produced by another database project) or a system database on the same server as the database in my project.
How do I handle referencing an external database? There are use cases where a project needs to reference an remote database that is not an SSDT database project. In my case, I am accessing the database of another company and putting this database under version control as a SSDT project is out of the question.
Create a new SQL project for the remote database, place any objects in the project that you need to reference (doesn't have to be the whole database), and then add that project as a Database Reference to your project. You don't have to deploy the remote database, just have the definition of objects you use so they can be referenced.
The option we finally settled on was to use SSIS for importing of data. This way, transfer of remote data happened in an ETL layer. Our database did not reference any remote databases this way, which also can improve performance (eliminates transfers over the network, cross server joins etc).
I would recommend using SSIS or a similar method to ETL your data into local tables that your database project can reference (without needing an external project reference).
I'm working on a project which relies on the presence of a number of tables, views and stored procedures. Until now I have built these all in SQL Server Management Studio.
Now I would like to continue to work on them inside of Visual Studio. This will provide the benefit of version control (along with a number of other benefits hopefully).
I have added a new project to my solution and started working on one of the views. When I tried to build the solution it failed as the new project didn't have a server/database associated: Error 1 SQL03006: View: [dbo].[vw_Test2] has an unresolved reference to object [EV870_ACCT_MASTER].
I was able to overcome this by
-creating a dbschema dump using vsdbcmd.exe
-adding the dbschema dump as a reference to my database project
Is this the correct approach?
Now i can see the schema (tables, views, sprocs etc) in the Schema view (I had to enable display of "external elements") and the error message has gone away. Note: I had to reference like: [$(SQLDatabase)].[dbo].[EV870_ACCT_MASTER]
Now I want to know how I can work with these objects that i've scripted. I don't know how to use the new tables, views, sprocs etc (I want to use LINQ). Do i have to run the scripts first? How then if they are "CREATE OBJECT" scripts, will they run in future (presumably they'd fail as the object already exists in the database). Will my project/solution know which objects need updating and update them?
Ultimately want to take it a lot further- my aim is that the solution will be portable and a the server/database will be configurables. Then my tables, views and stored procedures will be created or amended if they don't exist or are out of date. Is this possible?
When I then start working with the views etc using LINQ I want those server/database references to remain dynamic?
I know there are quite a few questions in there but i'm hoping someone will be able to point me in the right direction- there doesn't seem to be much useful documentation online (or that i've stumbled across so far).
Thanks
Lee
Where I work (and the last place I worked) we distribute the sql scripts to create the database along with the app. In sql a version number is stored and when the app is run it checks to see if its version is newer than the number stored in the database. If so then it knows it may need to run some new sql scripts in case there were any schema changes. When this happens, we just run through all the scripts because they are written in a way that running them multiple times won't hurt anything... this way we don't have to worry about tracking which scripts are the new ones. Just check the version number and that's it.
As far as working with this stuff in Visual Studio instead of Management studio, I'm not sure why anyone would want to do that. Depending on what you use for source control you may be able to get hooks for Management Studio, but even if not that doesn't stop you from keeping your sql scripts in source control. And I wouldn't switch from working with my sql files in management studio to visual studio for the benefit of having built in source control any day.