SQL Server Team-based Development - Red Gate Software

Chapter 3: Change Management and Source Control
3. Define the SQL Server instance, the appropriate security criteria, and each of the
databases to which you want to connect.
4. Click on the Options tab and enable Include views (so that the application-specific
view is included as part of the comparison).
5. Move to the Tables & Views tab. If the schema names are the same in each
database, and the objects in each database match up, you can begin the comparison.
If not, either:
a. use the Object Mapping tab to manually map each object in the source to the
appropriate object in the target, or
b. use the Owner Mapping tab to map the two schemas.
6. In the scheme suggested, the objects identified in the source are views, so they do not
have primary keys and can't be compared. For any such objects, the term Not Set will
appear in the Comparison Key column on the Tables & Views tab. Click on each Not
set entry to choose the correct mapping key from the options that SQL Data Compare
has identified.
7. Run the data comparison for the selected objects.
For the purposes of this chapter, the results of the comparison don't really matter.
What does matter is the creation of the comparison project that is the result of the
above process. The options settings, object mappings, the selection of custom comparison
keys, and the results of all these processes, can be saved as a project. Once the project
is saved it can be reused, not simply in the GUI, but also from a command line. The
command line allows for automation of the deployment process. In addition to the
command line, a full software development kit is also available to allow for integration
into home-grown applications. Automation of deployments is one the key ingredients
for team development. Taking into account the ability to map mismatched objects, it
is possible to support multiple teams and multiple projects from a single authoritative
source, and automate those deployments.
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