Demo: A First Look at SQL Server Data Tools

Roger,

thanks for a great introduction to the new tools. I can't express how thrilled I am to see this release from Microsoft as it promises to finally provide a solid end to end story for database developers in terms of deploying to on premise and SQL Azure.

We are running a team here that produces a software product that is subject to quick release cycles (and subsequent refactorings). We're targetting SQL Server 2008 and SQL Azure and currently rely on writing the per-release upgrade scripts using a combination of VSDBCMD (for automated schema diffs) and hand crafted scripts for e.g. renaming columns or moving data around, prior to executing the beforementioned schema diffs produced by VSDBCMD.

We just started on a new sprint with a user story for improving on quality assurance for upgrade scenarios and automated deployment to SQL Azure. As the person also responsible for the data tier in our software, I can't tell you how happy I am with the release of the new tools. It's going to make a big difference to our team, helping us provide a clear upgrade path with more automation - especially in terms of producing schema diffs for SQL Azure.

I have a few questions:

1. Is there a managed API (like the SQL SMO) that allows us to include dacpac files in our own installer and subsequently deploy (clean install / upgrade) to on premise SQL Server or SQL Azure?
2. The scenario I'm thinking of is having a single SQL Server Data Tools project as part of our solution and using TFS builds output dacpac files for SQL Server or SQL Azure (i.e. targetting the two different environments via configuration and then build the dacpacs).
   Is that possible?

Again, thanks for producing this video. Can't wait to get started.

This stuff looks great.  I am really enjoying the new capabilities, but wondering if there is a way to upgrade a data tier application (i.e. change an existing database's schema) without modifying any users or their permissions.  Essentially I would like to be able to to use a .dacpac to encapsulate all aspects of a database's schema WITHOUT messing around with stuff like users.  The scenario is developing a dacpac in a test environment, and then wanting to use it to upgrade say a production database, which obviously would have different security than in test.

I did find a bunch of advanced settings under the project settings' Debug tab, but those don't seem to affect the actual compare process when upgrading the data tier application from within SQL Management Studio -- it still insists on dropping existing users in that database, which is obviously not ok.

Any thoughts?

@rdoherty: Awesome. Thanks for the feedback. I'll get started on the tools starting monday.