I need to be able to publish an SSDT project programmatically. I am looking at using Microsoft.Build to do so but can not find any documentation. It seems pretty simple to create the .dacpac, but how would I either publish to an existing database or at the very least to a .sql file. The idea is to have it do what it does when I right click on the project and select publish. It should compare with a selected database and generate an upgrade script.
This is what I have so far to create the .dacpac:
partial class DBDeploy
{
Project project;
internal void publishChanges()
{
Console.WriteLine("Building project " + ProjectPath);
Stopwatch sw = new Stopwatch();
sw.Start();
project = ProjectCollection.GlobalProjectCollection.LoadProject(ProjectPath);
project.Build();
//at this point the .dacpac is built and put in the debug folder for the project
sw.Stop();
Console.WriteLine("Project build Complete. Total time: {0}", sw.Elapsed.ToString());
}
}
Essentially I am trying to do what this MSBuild Example shows but in code.
Sorry that this is all I have. The doecumentation on the Build classes is very poor. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks.
You should use SqlPackage.exe to publish your dacpac.
Also instead of passing too many parameters you could save your settings into DAC Publish Profile (this can be done from visual studio)
We need a way tell msbuild how and where to publish. Open your project in Visual Studio and begin to
Publish
it. Enter all needed info in the dialog, including your DB connection info and any custom SQLCMD variable values.Save Profile As...
to a file, e.g. Northwind.publish.xml. (You may thenCancel
.) Now we can use this and the project file to build and publish:This can take awhile and may appear to get stuck. Be patient. :)
I wanted to build and publish a database based on a sqlproj file and log helpful information to console. Here's what I arrived at:
This is for .NET 4 and above. Be sure and include assembly references to Microsoft.Build and Microsoft.Build.Framework.
I had to do something similar to this because VSDBCMD which we previously used does not deploy to SQL Server 2012 and we needed to support it. What I found was the Microsoft.SqlServer.Dac assembly which seems to come as part of the SQL Server data tools (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/tools.aspx)
When you run this on the client machine you will need the full version of the .NET 4 framework and the SQL CLR types and SQL T-SQL ScriptDOM pack found here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29065
Code below is from a mockup I made for testing the new deployment method and deploys a given .dacpac file
This seems to work on all versions of SQL Server from 2005 and up. There is a similar set of objects available in Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Dac, however I believe this is in the previous version of DACFx and is not included in the latest version. So use the latest version if you can.