Update data in localDB

Question

We are using Visual Studio 2012, and have a database project that deploys to an instance of localDB on each developers machine. All development work uses the localDB instance, until we are ready to checkin code and publish to our development SQL Server. My problem is that after a certain amount of time, all the data/primary key values in each person's localDB is becoming outdated. I would like to periodically "sync" everyone's instance of localDB, so that we are all using the same data for various lookup/dependency tables/userIds/etc.

Is there an easy way to include a data script in the database project that would push data to each instance automatically, or perhaps to grab a backup of our main dev DB and use it to copy over each developers localDB? I just need a way to periodically update everyone to make sure we are all working off of the same data.

Answer 1

There's no easy way to write these scripts, but I highly recommend that you write post-deploy scripts and include them in your project so when the project is pushed, everyone gets those changes. More importantly, they should be there so the changes will be released when you publish your project. You'll need to write them in such a manner that they can be repeated (if not exists ... insert type commands).

You can definitely backup and restore the shared database regularly as long as you know you've got the local changes checked in. Nothing is worse than losing a bunch of work because you've restored over your database.

You can use the "Data Compare" option under the SQL menu as well, but you want to understand what you're doing before just running it or you'll likely experience data loss.