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Category: Source Control

Use Source Control

Published 2016-07-14 by Kevin Feasel

James Anderson wants you to use source control:

SSC and SSDT require the use of compare tools to build deployment scripts. This is referred to as a state based migration. I’d done deployments like this in the past and saw that people reviewing the release found it difficult to review these scripts when the changes were more than trivial. For this reason, I decided to look at some migration based solutions. Migration solutions generate scripts during the development process that will be used to deploy changes to production. This allows the developer to break the changes down into small manageable individual scripts which in turn makes code reviews easier and deployments feel controlled. These scripts sit in the VS project and are therefore source controlled in the same way as the database.

James recommends Git here.  I’m not Git’s biggest fan, but it’s much, much better than not having any source control at all.

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Migrating TFS

Published 2016-04-21 by Kevin Feasel

Dave Mason has notes on migrating TFS from one server to another:

If you are migrating, but want to keep the databases on SQL 2012 Express, then you can skip this part. I wanted them moved to my SQL 2014 instance. So I did a traditional backup/restore from SQL 2012 Express to SQL 2014. I took new backups of the SQL 2014 databases, and then uninstalled SQL 2012 Express. Then I had to configure TFS to connect to a different SQL instance. Within the web.config file (%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 12.0\Application Tier\Web Services\web.config), I found an application setting named “applicationDatabase”. I made a backup copy of web.config first, then I changed the “applicationDatabase” value. It should be in a recognizable format if you’re familiar with SQL Server connection strings. You can also make this change within IIS. It was there that I noticed a few other settings that contained SQL connection strings. Check out the following in IIS and change settings as needed:

Dave has lots of screen shots to make the process easier to understand, but my main takeaway is that for the most part, migrating TFS  is a huge pain…

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Branching Strategy

Published 2016-04-07 by Kevin Feasel

Richie Lee points out an article on the SQL Server team’s source control strategy:

I’ve always advocated a dev/main/release process, but I’ll admit this has weaknesses, not least that testing will usually only take place properly in one branch, and that bugs found in one branch may not find there way “back” or “forward”, but to go with one branch means that you are forced to keep the quality at production-code quality and make use of feature switches. Certainly it’s an ambitious way of working, and Microsoft’s ALM documentation suggests that no branches is reserved for smaller teams, but surely if the SQL team at Microsoft are able to do it then certainly it’s a branching strategy worth considering?

Read the linked article as well.  This is an interesting look from the inside of how SQL Server gets developed.

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Powershell To Modify Team Foundation Version Control

Published 2015-12-24 by Kevin Feasel

Kevin Eckart makes use of TFS commands to maintain source:

In our environment, changes made in the Test branch have to travel through the Main branch and into the Release branch to be deployed into production. Sometimes changes need to move through quickly without regard to other changes, especially in an environment where there may be a single coder. Note: the following code will merge all checked in code regardless of who checked it in. Be careful in multi-coder environments.

This is your daily public service announcement saying that if you don’t have your database code in source control, you really should get your database code into source control.

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SQL Server And Mercurial

Published 2015-12-22 by Kevin Feasel

Joshua Feierman talks Mercurial:

While the choice of version control system is a very subjective and personal one, there are a number of reasons why I think Mercurial is an excellent choice, especially for someone just venturing into the world of version control. Here are a number of those reasons.

I prefer Mercurial to Git because I think the Mercurial commands are a bit easier to understand (although the proliferation of non-terrible Git GUIs has mitigated this somewhat).  Nevertheless, if you love Git, use Git; if you love Mercurial, use Mercurial; if you love SVN, use SVN; if you love Visual Source Safe…use Mercurial or Git…

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Git Support In SQL Source Control

Published 2015-12-22 by Kevin Feasel

Mickey Stuewe looks at Git support in Red Gate’s SQL Source Control tool:

At the beginning of October 2015, everything changed. That was when Redgate announced SQL Source Control users could now push to and pull from remote Git repositories.

And not just from within SQL Source Control – from within SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS).

Your developers are probably using Git, so you should too.  If your developers are using Mercurial, I applaud them.  If they’re using SVN, CVS, TFVC, Vault, or anything else (Visual SourceSafe?), flip a coin and decide to use Git/Mercurial or the generally accepted tool…

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