Managing an SQL Azure database

Question

I'm looking at the various ways I can manage an SQL Azure database. By manage in this instance I mean creating the database and updating the database schema using a Microsoft Team Services release jobs. Ideally I would use data-migrations with Entity Framework to achieve this, but in the current project we are not using Entity Framework and it is a bit late to introduce it now.

From what I can see there are options using VS Database Projects and also DACPAC. Unfortunately these both seem quite old and I'm struggling to find any comprehensive info on them with respect to SQL Azure.

Can anyone tell me if there are any other reasonable options with respect to managing an SQL database schema in Azure, when using VSTS to deploy schema updates?

Answer 1

Outside of using an Azure SQL Database Deployment task that hits against a DACPAC, the only other option I've found for doing this is to use the Powershell command Invoke-Sqlcmd to execute a preset script to update your database, with the script being framed in one big transaction. The upside of this approach is speed and simplicity. The downside has been that you have to prepare and check in a script for each release that will be executed.