At my DAC talk at TechEd last week, the thing that seemed to cause the most interest was the PowerShell scripts to use DACPACs/BACPACs. I thought I'd post that here, along a question about cmdlets in general. Using PowerShell against the library allows admins to use all of the functionality that's in SSMS, with the [...]
Bob Beauchemin
SQL Server Blog
Using PowerShell with DAC 3.0
Posted on: June 18, 2012 10:34 am
I’ve got the last talk at TechEd and its almost LAST CALL
Posted on: June 14, 2012 8:15 am
I've been at TechEd North America in Orlando this week and have seen some amazing new things. Upcoming operating systems, new hardware, and a detailed technical followup on the Azure (cloud) announcements from last week, including some Windows Azure SQL Database (was SQL Azure) upcoming enhancements. I've spend quite a bit of time at the [...]
DACFx 3.0 – Import and Export with BACPACs
Posted on: May 22, 2012 10:12 am
The last piece of the DAC puzzle (at least for now) is import and export. Export makes a non-transactionally consistant copy of database content that uses the BACPAC format (schema and data) and Import creates a new database with the BACPAC schema and data. Currently, its the most-used method of backing up and restoring a [...]
DACFx 3.0: The new file formats
Posted on: May 17, 2012 11:58 am
In the last posting, I talked about the differences between DACFx 3.0 and previous versions from an API point of view. This time, I'll look at the files in a DACPAC and see how those differ. DACPAC really stores a database model, that can be used to recreate the database and server (3.0 only) objects in the [...]
DACFx 3.0: The new programming API
Posted on: May 16, 2012 12:10 pm
Looking at the API and at the serialized form (i.e. the DACPAC), it turns out that DACFx 3.0 is not just "DAC V-next". It's an entire quantum change from all other versions, including DAC 2.0, the version that introduced the BACPAC (serialized schema and data). This has some interesting repercussions with compatibility. Let's start with the [...]
Scripting SQL Server databases sans SMO Scripter
Posted on: May 10, 2012 11:38 am
I can script out a database schema (and optionally data) from SQL Server databases. Any version from 2005 and beyond, as well as SQL Azure Database. And most all instance level objects. And I'm not the SMO scripter object. Or a DBA. Who am I? I would be DACFx 3.0. And I can do some things (unlike [...]
The Rest of the Story: Co-existing VS2010 and SSDT database projects
Posted on: April 17, 2012 3:00 pm
After my last adventure, I thought it would be interesting to try the "upgrade path" with SSDT and older "Database Projects" (i.e. Visual Studio for Database Professionals, or whatever the last name was before we went to the nice SSDT acronym, I always called them "Data Dude" projects after Gert Drapers, the original Data Dude). [...]
A First Look at Data-Tier Applications 2.0
Posted on: July 6, 2011 1:44 pm
The next version of Data-Tier Applications is version 2.0. You can get a CTP of it today; where the CTP is located really gives away the game. It's located at SQL Azure Labs, listed under SQL Azure "Import/Export". The writeup on this page identifies a few interesting things: 1. It's a preview of the Denali [...]
Data-Tier Applications – Version 1.1 – Where?
Posted on: July 5, 2011 4:37 pm
So DAC 1.1 has been out for a while (since March 2, 2011) now. The big change is that the DAC "upgrade" process is now an in-place upgrade rather than a side-by-side upgrade. As far as I can see, you couldn't do a side-by-side upgrade in 1.1 if you wanted to. AFAIK, in-place upgrade is [...]
Looking at Data-Tier Applications (DAC)? Look at version 1.1
Posted on: July 5, 2011 3:37 pm
About a week or so ago, I read a request for information about a SQL Server database management feature known as Data-Tier Applications, abbreviated as DAC (apparently someone realized that the DTA abbreviation was already "taken" in SQL Server (Database Tuning Advisor) but not that DAC was too (Dedicated Admin Connection)). Data-Tier Applications is a [...]
DAC support SQL Azure and vice-versa. It’s live.
Posted on: April 19, 2010 1:23 pm
Last week I did a talk at SQLConnections on SQL Azure Database and Data-Tier Applications (DAC). At the time (it was the day of Visual Studio 2010 launch), I explained that conference abstracts had to be submitted 6 months ago. At the time, because of some coincidental feature correspondence (e.g. the DAC whitepaper suggests only using [...]
DACPAC and pre-SQL Server 2008 R2 versions
Posted on: January 12, 2010 4:40 pm
I thought it was curious that in a DACPAC you can specify required version and edition of SQL Server as a deployment option. But DAC (Data-Tier Applications) is a new feature of SQL Server 2008 R2 and VS2010 data tools. So what versions and editions does it support? (or will it support?). The somewhat surprising answer [...]
