Tag: SSDT

Compare SQL Database Schema and deploy changes using Visual Studio

Mohit Goyal4 Comments

Many a times, you would need to identify the difference in database schema for two SQL databases so that you can take certain course of action. There are a lot of tools in market which can do this, but you would need to pay for them to get full difference or to use them on continuous basis. However, Microsoft Visual Studio has this functionality built-in for you and if you happen to use Visual Studio as your code development tool, this functionality is basically free. So in this scenario, it also prevents hassle of learning another tool. In this blog post, we’ll learn how to do the same using Visual Studio.

Caution – I am going to demo this Visual Studio Enterprise. I’m not sure what all sku’s it is associated with, so if you cannot repeat steps below, you might want to check that. Read More »

Continuous Integration and Deployment for SQL Database using SSDT and VSTS

Mohit Goyal11 Comments

The combination of technical and cultural processes behind databases makes automation difficult. Databases has a state associated with them, so you cannot blow them away like application code and create again from scratch without losing the data. Managing change in a way that doesn’t impact the data is very problematic. Combine that with the cultural issues, the silos, it creates a really difficult problem. There are some general best practices that you can apply to tackle a lot of this complexity, but any time you try to design the solution and get into the technicalities, a lot of time you end up implementing something very specific to a particular type of database. In this blog post, we’ll learn how to use SSDT to implement continuous integration and deployment for SQL database Schema to take some of these worries away.

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