Database Build Breakers: Avoiding Constraint Violations during SQL Server Deployments

A common database build breaker is data that violates the conditions of any of the CHECK, UNIQUE or FOREIGN KEY constraints, and unique non-clustered indexes, designed to protect the consistency and integrity of your data. The build errors can happen during development, where you will typically build the database, temporarily disable constraints, bulk import the Read more

Custom Deployments from Source Control using SQL Compare Command line

Giorgi Abashidze explains how his team use a 2-phase deployment process with SQL Compare Command line, and some SQL Synonyms, to automate custom deployments for each of their customers, while only needing to maintain one branch per release in source control. Read more

Deploying Data and Schema Together with SQL Compare or SQL Change Automation

You want to use SQL Compare or SQL Change Automation (SCA) to create or update a database, and at the same time ensure that its data is as you expect. You want to avoid running any additional PowerShell scripting every time you do it, and you want to keep everything in source control, including the data. You just want to keep everything simple. Phil Factor demonstrates how it's done, by generating MERGE scripts from a stored procedure. Read more

From Source Control to Database using SQL Compare Command Line

Giorgi Abashidze explains how his team use SQL Compare Command line to automate database deployments for their customers, without having access to the real staging or production databases, merely by using our development database contained under TFS Source Control. Read more

Using Custom Deployment Scripts with SQL Compare or SQL Change Automation

Phil Factor describes how custom pre- and post-deployment scripts work, when doing state-based database deployments with SQL Compare or SQL Change Automation, and how you might use them to, for example, add a version number to the target database, specify its database settings, or stuff data into some tables. Read more

Using the SQL Compare command line with Argfiles

Phil Factor demonstrates how using XML argfiles to pass parameters to SQL Compare cuts out a lot of the tedious scripting involved in modifying a database schema comparison and deployment process, as required for each target database. Read more

SQL Compare 14.0: A Command Line Interface on Linux and support for SQL Server 2019

SQL Compare is the industry standard tool for comparing and deploying database schema changes, and version 14.0 now provides a Command Line Interface (CLI) on Linux (available as a beta, at time of writing). Teams working with SQL Server on Linux, or across multiple platforms, benefit from seamless development processes, driven by SQL Compare, without Read more

Automating Schema Comparisons with SQL Compare Projects and PowerShell

Your PowerShell process for database comparison and deployment is running smoothly, and your instinct is to 'leave well alone'. However, you continually need to delve into the script to tweak comparison settings or add a new command line switch. Phil Factor proposes a way to avoid this using SQL Compare projects. Read more

Comparing and Deploying SQL Server Databases using the SQL Compare Command Line on Linux or Windows

SQL Compare now includes a Linux-based command line interface (CLI), as well as a Windows-based one, for doing schema comparison and deployments of SQL Server databases. This article offers worked examples of CLI scripts for various schema comparison tasks, to get you up and running with either version. Read more

Handling Tricky Data Migrations during State-based Database Deployments

This article demonstrates how to use a 'state' approach to database source control, when the nature of the database changes cause you to hit difficulties with migrating existing data. These difficulties happen when the differences are such that it is impossible for any automated script to make the changes whilst preserving existing data. Read more

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Database Builds and Deployments