Deploying to SQL Azure with Powershell - Is there a way to generate the data-loss warning report?

Question

I have a question regarding Data-Tier Application (DACPAC) upgrade when deploying to a SQL Azure database. When we upgrade the DACPAC manually through the wizard UI, there is a step where we review the data-loss warning report and have the ability to save the action report to an HTML file (See here under "Review the Upgrade Plan Page"). The Action column displays the actions, such as Transact-SQL statements, that will be run to perform the upgrade. The Data Loss column will contain a warning if the associated action could delete data.

Right now, I'm automating the database upgrade process using Powershell, which works beautifully so far. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a way for it to generate the same data-loss warning report.

An excerpt of my Powershell upgrade script is below:

## Generate the database change list (database drift) and upgrade script and save them to file.
$dacChanges = $dacStore.GetDatabaseChanges($dataTierAppNameToUpgrade) | Out-File -Filepath .\DatabaseChanges.txt

## Getting the DAC incremental upgrade script for data-tier application
$dacStore.GetIncrementalUpgradeScript($dataTierAppNameToUpgrade, $nextDacType) | Out-File -Filepath .\DatabaseUpgrade.sql

The DatabaseChanges.txt output file generated by GetDatabaseChanges() wasn't really informative, so we are wondering if there's a way to get the same report file as the one we would get if we were to go through the upgrade wizard manually. This report has been a great help to the deployment team when resolving data migration issues, and we would like to be able to inspect it manually when we deploy to a live production database.

We've searched through the MSDN documentations but didn't have any luck. Does anyone know if this feature is supported for Powershell deployments? Is it a plan that this will be supported in the near future?

Thanks for your help in advance.

Answer 1

Just got in touch with the owner of DAC @ Microsoft, and here's the solution he suggested: it is possible by using their managed API or through SqlPackage.exe.

SqlPackage.exe has an action on it to produce a deployment report. If there is a possible data loss issue detected it will be included in the report.

Reference: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh550080(v=VS.103).aspx

Answer 2

According to http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sqlserver.management.dac.dacupgradeoptions.aspx, by default IgnoreDataLoss is false, which means if data loss is detected, the upgrade will fail. In .NET, you can handle the DacActionFinished event (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sqlserver.management.dac.dacstore.dacactionfinished.aspx), which will fire when the upgrade operation finishes. If something goes wrong, the event arg’s Error property (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sqlserver.management.dac.dacactioneventargs.error.aspx) will contain the detailed exception. It may not be the html report you want, but it will still give you some information. You can handle CLR events from PowerShell. Please refer to http://blogs.msdn.com/b/powershell/archive/2008/05/24/wpf-powershell-part-3-handling-events.aspx for a sample.

By the way, actually the issue is not only specific to SQL Azure. You can also modify your tag to SQL Server to get further suggestions.

Best Regards,

Ming Xu.