How can I create and develop new database projects in Visual Studio?

Question

I want to find a way to develop database projects quickly in Visual Studio. Any ideas?

Answer 1

I have a method of creating and updating database projects in Visual Studio 2005 that I thought was common knowledge. After asking a few coworkers if they knew how to update their database projects with this method and receiving no's, I thought I would blog about it and pass along some helpful hints and best practices.

I work a lot with databases and especially stored procedures that are built to be used with business logic/data access .NET framework. I enjoy working with databases and always create database projects to live with my .NET projects. I am psychotic about keeping database projects up to date. I have been burned too many time in my younger years where I needed to create a stored procedure that was deleted or was out of sync with the application using the database.

After creating your database project in Visual Studio 2005 as shown:

alt text http://www.cloudsocket.com/images/image-thumb16.png

Create 3 new directories in the projects: Tables, Stored Procedures and Functions. I usually only stored these for my projects.

alt text http://www.cloudsocket.com/images/image-thumb17.png

I now open the Server Explorer in Visual Studio and create a new connection to my desired database. I am using Northwind as my example. I am not going to walk through the creation of the connection for this example.

alt text http://www.cloudsocket.com/images/image-thumb18.png

I will use a stored procedure as my example on how to update the database project. First I expand the "Stored Procedures" directory in the Server Explorer for the Northwind database. I select a stored procedure.

alt text http://www.cloudsocket.com/images/image-thumb19.png

I drag the stored procedure to the "Stored Procedures" directory in the Solution Explorer and drop it.

alt text http://www.cloudsocket.com/images/image-thumb20.png

alt text http://www.cloudsocket.com/images/image-thumb21.png

If you open the file for the dragged stored procedures you will find that the IDE created the script as followed:

/****** Object:  StoredProcedure [dbo].[CustOrdersOrders]    Script Date: 08/25/2007 15:22:59 ******/
IF  EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sys.objects WHERE object_id = OBJECT_ID(N'[dbo].[CustOrdersOrders]') AND type in (N'P', N'PC'))
DROP PROCEDURE [dbo].[CustOrdersOrders]
GO
/****** Object:  StoredProcedure [dbo].[CustOrdersOrders]    Script Date: 08/25/2007 15:22:59 ******/
SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO
SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO
IF NOT EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sys.objects WHERE object_id = OBJECT_ID(N'[dbo].[CustOrdersOrders]') AND type in (N'P', N'PC'))
BEGIN
EXEC dbo.sp_executesql @statement = N'
CREATE PROCEDURE CustOrdersOrders @CustomerID nchar(5)
AS
SELECT OrderID,
    OrderDate,
    RequiredDate,
    ShippedDate
FROM Orders
WHERE CustomerID = @CustomerID
ORDER BY OrderID
'
END
GO

You can now drag over all the tables, functions and remaining stored procedures from your database. You can also right click on each script in the Solution Explorer and run the scripts on your database project's referenced database.

Answer 2

DataDude? http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vsts2008/db/default.aspx

Answer 3

Hey Chris, I also use the same way for keeping a database project, the only problem, is that you often make changes to stored procedures, and sometimes you forget which ones you changed, so you might drag one and forget the other. Do you know of a way to synchronize the database project with the database, or a way to import latest script for stored procs in your project, after they have been added by dragging the first time.