visual studio 2017 sql server database project

Also, as mentioned earlier, in our case, we have only difference in one of the sql tables. Once its completed, you should be able to view results like below:Īs you can see, it does not seem to of much info. It might take some time to finish depending upon your network connection, etc. Let’s start comparison process within Visual Studio. Just for reference purposes, one of table named dbo.BuildVersion contains an extra column named BuildDate in our source database(and this is not present in target sql database): To start comparison process, now click the compare button enabled at top of left drop-down: The middle option allows you to switch source and target sql database.

Now, click the dropdown on the right side and then select target: Select target from schema compare windowĪgain, we need to specify target sql database connection details.

Now go to browse and specify the source sql connection details as per your environment and then click connect: Select database and then click ‘Select Connection’: In the schema compare window, select dropdown to the left and then select source: Specify source and target sql databaseĪgain, right click project and select ‘Schema compare’: Select schema compare from project This step is very important if you not only want to see the results, but also want to auto-generate sql script for the difference. Right click on project in Visual Studio, select properties and open Project Settings. However, you can do the steps on sql databases of your choice. We’ll be using sample sql server database for this post’s purpose. Once its created, we’ll need to specify the source and target sql server databases for it to compare. For this, go to File -> New Project -> Select SQL server database project: Create a SQL Database projectįirst, we need to create a new SQL database project in Visual Studio. 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. In this blog post, we’ll learn how to do the same using Visual Studio.Ĭaution – I am going to demo this Visual Studio Enterprise. So in this scenario, it also prevents hassle of learning another tool. 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. 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. 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.

Visual studio 2017 sql server database project