Visual Studio Sql Server Project – SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) is a modern development tool for creating SQL Server relational databases, Azure SQL databases, Analysis Services (AS) data models, Integration Services (IS) packages, and Reporting Services (RS) reports. . With SSDT, you can design and deploy any SQL Server content as easily as you develop an application in Visual Studio.
If Visual Studio 2022 is already installed, you can edit the list of workloads to include SSDT. If you do not have Visual Studio 2022 installed, you can download and install Visual Studio 2022.
Visual Studio Sql Server Project
For Analysis Services, Integration Services, or Reporting Services projects, you can go to Extensions > Manage Extensions within Visual Studio or install the appropriate extensions from the Marketplace.
Sql Server Computed Columns & Dacpac Deployments
With Visual Studio 2019, the functionality required to enable Analysis Services, Integration Services, and Reporting Services projects has moved only to the corresponding Visual Studio extensions (VSIX).
If Visual Studio 2019 is already installed, you can edit the list of workloads to include SSDT. If you do not have Visual Studio 2019 installed, you can download and install Visual Studio 2019 Community.
For situations where offline installation is required, such as low bandwidth or isolated networks, SSDT is available for offline installation. Two methods are available:
To download and install SSDT for Visual Studio 2017, or an earlier version of SSDT, see Previous Releases of SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT and SSDT-BI).
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After installing SSDT, work through these tutorials on how to create databases, packages, data models, and reports using SSDT.
Did you know that you can edit the SQL content yourself? If you do, you’re not only helping to improve our documentation, but you’re also credited as a contributor to the page. Many database administrators and developers prefer to use SQL Server Management Studio to make changes directly to the database schema. As a production DBA, I can certainly say that there are situations where this is acceptable and even required, however in general the Visual Studio database project is a better approach. I switched from developing in SSMS to database development in Visual Studio several years ago and have never looked back.
If you know how to get started in Visual Studio and how to import a database, you can jump right into the benefits of using Visual Studio for database development.
There are several ways to get started with database development in Visual Studio. First, you’ll need Visual Studio. Visual Studio used to be a premium and quite expensive product, however, a few years ago Microsoft released the Community Edition, which is free! You can download a copy from here: https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/community/
Sql Server Data Tools (ssdt)
The obvious and easy way is to create a new database project and start developing the database from scratch.
Most likely, however, you will have existing databases that you want to import into a database project. First, create a new database project and then import the existing schema, which you can do in several ways:
This option allows you to import the schema by connecting directly to a SQL Server database. This is the easiest option, but please note that it may not work in some environments if there are network restrictions or if you do not have access to the server.
To address the potential limitations mentioned above, we can ask our friendly production DBA to extract the DACPAC from the production database. DACPACs are files that contain the entire database schema without any data. You can read more about data tier applications on MSDN: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/data-tier-applications/
Installing Sql Server Data Tools Bi (and Unattended Install)
In SQL Server Management Studio this can be done by right-clicking Database -> Tasks -> Extract Database Tier Application.
This will create a *.dacpac file in a designated location that can be imported into Visual Studio.
It is also possible to extract DACPAC via command line using SqlPackage.exe. SqlPackage.exe is a small command-line application responsible for extracting and deploying DACPACs. This is part of the SQL Server installation and not Visual Studio. More on that later.
If, for some reason, the DACPAC option is not possible, then we can import the SQL file. As a developer, you can have your friendly DBAs create database scripts. As a DBA you can do this similarly to extract DACPAC. Right click on the database and go to Tasks and Generate Scripts…
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I described how to get started with Visual Studio and how to import an existing database. In the next section I will focus on why we did this and the benefits Visual Studio brings to the database development world.
Once you have the database in the project, you will be able to configure configuration options. For example, you can configure momentary isolation or enable Service Broker. The deployment process will take care of all this for you and apply the configuration to the database:
We can also set the target SQL version, which will trigger Visual Studio to verify that we are using the correct syntax.
If you want to upgrade a database to a newer version of SQL, this is a good way to find out if it is using deprecated syntax. Import the database into Visual Studio, set the target platform to the required SQL version and run a build.
Build Sql Server Data Project With Vsts Build Agent
Visual Studio allows direct integration with source code, which, in turn, allows distributed development across a large team.
Consider a scenario where two people make changes to the same objects in the database schema. In the case of SSMS, the second person applying the changes will likely override the changes applied by the first person in the interim. You can reduce this risk by using source control, which will merge the code and ensure that there are no conflicting changes. You will also have security provided by the deployment process, which will detect any changes to the database made outside the project.
Visual Studio is smart enough to recommend potential problems found in the code. These are not errors and we will not cause the code to fail. Think of it as an experienced DBA looking over your shoulder and telling you what to change.
It is also possible to create our own authentication rules, which can be useful to meet company and DBA standards. For example, it can flag any cross-database federation or warn when using three-part object naming conventions.
The Forgotten Database Project
Suppose we want to rename an existing column. This will obviously affect every other object, method, view or function using this column. Visual Studio will automatically detect all dependencies and bindings and highlight a problem.
As you can see, this not only fails the build, but is also flagged in the view referencing this column:
Visual Studio also allows you to write integration tests for stored procedures that can be run as part of the deployment routine. The output of the test will affect the outcome of the entire deployment.
To create a unit test for a stored procedure, right-click the stored procedure and click Create Unit Test. This will open a window where we can select the actual process for which we want to create unit tests:
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The unit tests are built in C# so it’s not a database language but fear not, it’s not that hard. In our example, we will create a unit test for the retention process because it accepts parameters. After you have selected the process to create the test, click OK
The first connection – “Execute” should use the same account that the production application will use. It will also check permissions to ensure that the application will be able to run the process.
Second Connection – “Secondary Data”. This is a privileged connection for test generation and cleanup later. It can also be used to check what the first connection did. For example, the application account may only have permission and not have SELECT access to the schema for security reasons. Suppose we have a stored procedure that inserts data into a table. Successful completion of the procedure does not mean that the test was successful. We need to check that the data is also correct. This can be achieved with a secondary account.
Deployment is one of Visual Studio’s greatest strengths. As a production DBA, I remember times where I had to create over a hundred scripts for large deployments. It could easily take a week and what could go wrong! Visual Studio makes this process very simple and easy although with a few gotchas which I will explain below.
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The concept of deployment is simple. Visual Studio compares the differences between the current database schema we’re deploying to and the schema in the project we’re deploying from, and it generates the deployment script.
To publish a database directly from Visual Studio, right-click the database project and click Publish, select Connection String and the desired option and wait a minute or two. You can see the progress in the output window:
If we register as a data tier application, we will also be able to stop the deployment if the production database deviates from the project. For example, when someone directly changed a table in SSMS that is not in the project, we can ask the deployment to stop waiting.