“It works on MY machine”
– Everyone

Some time back I blogged “which database source control model works well for you” and it has come in SO handy when explaining the different models to people – but the one question I get asked not infrequently, is:

“Is there any way that I can use Redgate SQL Change Automation with Visual Studio based SSDT?“

It’s always a really difficult question to answer because fundamentally SQL Source Control (Redgate’s state based tool) and SSDT (Microsoft’s state based tool) functionally seek to do the same thing, making them competitors. However there are, on the odd occasion, good reasons as to why I am asked the question and one of those same scenarios came up today:

• Our developers work in Visual Studio and have already been using SSDT for a long time, it works for them, we just want to extend it with Migrations to handle complex changes.

So the option here is, leave it as it is, or try to work with both. Not always going to be my first choice but it got me thinking.

Starting from a memory

A few months ago, when life was “normal” and I was working in my office with *gulp* PEOPLE, I tried to make this scenario work by simply linking SQL Change Automation to the project folder created by SSDT but unfortunately it was riddled with problems. The SSDT importer and repo look like this:

And if you point SQL Change Automation at the local repo with this in it will correctly tell you:

Now of course this wasn’t unexpected. It’s not designed to work this way, is it? No. But way back then I did figure out, shrewdly, that if I used SQL Source Control to carry out an initial commit just to a working folder, it would generate a RedGate.ssc and RedGateDatabaseInfo.xml file and you can copy them into the SSDT repo to trick SQL Change Automation into thinking that it’s a SQL Source Control repo… unfortunately this trick no longer works. Sad.

Add a hop and a step

But what got me thinking today was the context with which the question was asked. It was more about separation of duties. Once the developers have effectively done their job and delivered the change into the repo, their job was effectively done! “That’s how it should look moving forwards. What’s next?” – and then I had an idea.

Given that SSDT allows you to push and pull the code and apply it to your own database, what is stopping us from using SQL Change Automation to pick up on the changes against the database we sync our changes to from our SSDT project?

Genius. Evil genius.

So I created a new Database to simulate having another developer on my instance and gave it to Peter Parker:

You can then do a schema compare to another DB from your project, effectively PULL down changes from the remote to your local repository, and then sync them back up to your local development DB; this is how Devs stay up to date with each other but could, in this methodology, be how DBAs or senior developers pull down the changes to their local DB, where they test the new state, and then generate a new migration from it.

So I made a change on my dev database and captured it in the project right click on the project name > schema compare > dev db compare to project > update) and then committed and pushed:

and sure enough my repository was updated:

But then I simulated pulling down the change and applying it to Peter Parker’s DB (again using Schema Compare) and then I created a SQL Change Automation project in VS, in the same solution but pointing the project to a migrations folder in the repo:

Yes I accidentally called the project Database1 don’t remind me I’m embarrassed enough!

Then I added my baseline database:

It created the baseline and the project immediately with no issues and picked up on the changes I had made using SSDT:

and I was able to commit my project and changes into my repository in Azure DevOps:

It was just that easy! Now what this means for the development process is that developers _could_ feasibly work with SSDT, as they are comfortable with it, and then more senior members of the team can generate migration scripts from there, building the database from scratch and deploying in a reliable, repeatable fashion.

Just to prove to you my build even ran green from this:

So in summary what this gives us is the ability to adapt a regular SSDT workflow, one that developers are comfortable with and which has been in the team for months or years, add in the knowledge of DBAs or team leads, a greater separation of duties for high risk schema changes, and the control and flexibility (and peace of mind) that comes with a migrations based deployment process.

Nice.

The fine print

I’m sure by now you’ve realized something: this is not, nor will it ever (I believe) be a supported workflow. If you implement the above in a production sense for something other than just testing then it’s not something you’ll be able to get help with from one of the Redgate engineers if you need to troubleshoot.

Also, if you’re going to introduce a sequence of changes like this to achieve the hybrid model, it does make more sense that you implement SQL Source Control for the state side (given that it’s right there in the SQL Toolbelt with SQL Change Automation anyway).

But IS IT POSSIBLE to achieve a similar, Visual Studio based* hybrid workflow with SSDT and SQL Change Automation by using a database to ‘hop’ the changes across?

Yes, it certainly looks that way!

*If you’re planning on using SSDT in Azure Data Studio too then this workflow could also work for you, SQL Change Automation is present in SSMS and VS so it’s really up to you!