I am in the process of converting our legacy custom database deployment process with custom built tools into a full fledged SSDT project. So far everything has gone very well. I have composite projects that can deploy a base database as well as projects that deploy sample and test data.
The problem I am having now is finding a solution for running some sort of code that can call a web service to get an activation code and add it to the database as the final step of the process. Can anyone point me to a hook that I might be able to use?
UPDATE: To be clearer I am doing this to make it easier to maintain and deploy our sample and test data to a local machine. We can easily use Jenkins to activate the sites when they are deployed nightly to our official testing environments. I'm just hoping to be able to do this in a single step to replace the homegrown database deploy tool that we use now.
In my deployment scenario I wrapped database deployment process in some powershell scripts which do necessary prerequisites. For example:
powershell script is started and then it stops some services
next it run sqlpackage.exe or preproduced sql deployment scripts
finally powershell script starts services.
You can pass some parameters from powershell to sql scripts or sqlpackage.exe as sqlcmd variables. So you can call webservice first, then pass activation code as sqlcmd variable and use the variable in postdeployment script.
Particularly if it's the final step, I'd be tempted to do this separately, using whatever tool you're using to do the deployment: Powershell scripts, msbuild, TFS, Jenkins, whatever. Presumably there's also a front-end of some description that gets provisioned this way?
SSDT isn't an eierlegende Wollmilchsau, it's a set of tools for managing database changes.
I suspect if the final step were "provision a Google App Engine Instance and deploy a Python script", for example, it wouldn't appear to be a natural candidate for inclusion in an SSDT post-deploy script, and I reckon this falls into the same category.
Related
I have a ASP.NET project with my own Development, Staging and Production servers.
In all environements, I move code manually. So everytime I have to promote a change, I perform the following steps:
Get my latest code from SVN.
Merge the code between lower and to be promoted environment using tools like Beyond Compare.
Then I move the respective ASPX and DLL files and any Stored Procedures or table data manually to Production.
This is a very time consuming process and I would like to get some automated methods for code moves.
Is there a way I can get the code moved from SVN to my Servers using some automated tools or in a automated packages.
I am using ASP.NET 2.0 with IIS 7 and SQL Server 2008.
msbuild can help you with getting the code from svn and building it. You will need to create simple batch files to run it, alternatively you can use Cruisecontrol for that.
Manual merges should be avoided. If you are using VS2010, you can use xsd to transform your config files to production version
I am not a big fan of storedprocs. If you can encapsulate your stored procs with the code there is less room for errors and rolling back changes etc as well as making the deployment easier. Database schema updates should be done in a batch file and applied automatically.
There are multiple ways to deploy: webdeploy or msi file. It depends on how much work is required during the deployment process
I would look into continuous integration. My favorite because it is simplest to use is TeamCity.
You will still have to do some work with MSBuild.
You can set up the builds to be a button push from the site.
Have the code pushed when you check into svn.
Just about any way you can think of.
I would strongly urge you to use it to ALWAYS build you code and run unit tests on each SVN check it. It does not have to deploy but TeamCity will provide to you constant feedback on the state of your solution.
I’m looking for a good deployment strategy for deploying a ASP.NET MVC3 application. What I imagine is that each deployment would be some kind of commit to a Source Management System in the sense that a deployment tool could automatically do the following:
1) Upon generating a deployment package (a commit) the tool would
remember the state of my Web.Config file, the state of a folder of
auto-generated scripts containing new database changed, the state of
a folder of batch files that contain new tasks to be run on the
server, the state of files specifying ISS settings changes, etc.
2) When I build a package the next time, the tool would know to only
package the new script files, web.config changes, new batch files,
new ISS settings since my last package
3) Apply the package unto my web application
I started looking into MS Deploy but it only seems to do number 3. I’ve been searching around for either an application that that does what I imagine or a strategy to combine some SMS and MS Deploy. I'm hoping that someone has already solved the problem I feel I have here. My last resort of course is to build the tool but again, that would be my last resort.
Are you using Team Foundation Server? If so, TFS comes with tools to automate builds (including labeling code, running unit tests, deploying, et cetera.) Take a look at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms181710(v=vs.80).aspx
TFS is not exactly easy to configure and get going but it's free if you are already using TFS.
If you are not using TFS, look for continuous integration tools like NAnt or TeamCity.
Have you used Web Deploy and the "Publish" feature under Build in Visual Studio?
You can set options for things like leaving the previous files on the server.
Your web.config file, do you mean the main one or one that already exists elsewhere on the server? Your web.config file should copy from your project to the server, or are there settings that are different when running locally vs server? If so, look at using transforms to modify web.config.
This is only a partial answer to #1 for you, but we looked for a long time on a migration tool that we liked... We ultimately found Migrator.Net: http://code.google.com/p/migratordotnet/
Doing this, you can turn db migrations into a batch command
How can I automate the web-application build process, that includes following steps:
Change connection string.
Recreate database by scripts.
Deploy web-site by ftp.
Copy some files to server in addition to application.
And may be perform some initialize operations.
Should I write any script/programm, use Visual Studio or any another program?
Personally I use a Continuous Integration tool to do this kind of work.
The one I mainly use is Team City by JetBrains.
This kind of software can look at your Source Control repo for new checking, perform builds, publish builds to servers as well as running pre/post build events.
You've to start learning MSBuild. It is VERY simple and straightforward, so just start and you'll see ;)
In adddition to built in features it has Community Pack with many tasty things so you will be able to:
Replace connection string in config file using regex or replace whole config with predefined connection string (FileUpdate or Copy task)
Execute database scripts (MSBuild.Community.Tasks.SqlServer.ExecuteDDL)
Deploy site using Copy task
And many other...
You can run pre and post events in Visual Studio. To do this, simply right click on the project and in the project properties navigate to the 'Build Events' options. Here you can specify the pre and post build events (you can also specify when the event runs - on successful build or otherwise).
Once the project has been successfully built, the post build event can be set up to perform the tasks specified. You can detail the steps either in a separate file or in Visual Studio project's build events itself.
More information
Pre/Post Build event command line arguments
How to: Specify Build Events (C#)
Much along the continuous integration concept Jamie mentions, we use BuildMaster internally for all of our applications since we develop it :)
Now that we have a version offered for free, I'll share some thoughts on each of your bullet points:
Change connection string
This is something that is handled uniquely by the tool. Each environment would get its own "instance" of a configuration file and in a deployment plan you can use the "deploy configuration files" action to put them in any environment. This means there are no transforms to worry about since the config file is stored and versioned within the tool.
Recreate database by scripts
This is another major feature we have. Object code (stored procs, views, etc.) can be run every time with a DROP/CREATE combo, but adding indexes, dropping columns, can only be done once (you can't bring a column's data back without a restore!)
BuildMaster handles these types of change scripts differently - they can only be run at most once against an environment's instance of your database. This makes it super easy to bring any new or existing initialized database schema up-to-date.
Deploy web-site by FTP
Just add an action to your deployment plan, and you click Create Build or Promote Build, it will do that.
Copy some files to server in addition to application
If the process is repeatable you can do this easily, if need be by using a manual action that will remind you to do it.
And may be perform some initialize operations
This sounds like a "change control" to me, a one-time change when you release. We support these as well but not in the free version unfortunately.
I am trying to create a setup procedure which installs my entire web application. I am using Visual Studio's Setup and Deployment Project. So far I've gotten it to deploy my website to the Inetpub folder, and I've also added some custom actions which allow it to run some SQL and setup my database.
The last thing I have to integrate into the setup process is my two SSIS packages. Not only do these need to be installed, they also need to be scheduled to run nightly.
The packages are simple, and don't reference anything unusual. They are just 2 .dtsx files.
So far, I've seen that I can use something called dtutil in order to create a dtsinstall.exe file which can be run to install the SSIS packages to either the file system or the database.
First of all, is this the easiest way to do it? And secondly, how would I go about scheduling the packages to be run nightly?
One caveat is that I need this to install silently, without prompting the user for any input.
First, create a new job in SQL Agent. In the steps panel, click New, give it a name, and for the job type, select SQL Server Integration Services Package. For the Package source, select File system, and point it to where you want the file to live.
Then you can select Schedules from the left panel, and configure how often you want it to run.
After that, you should be able to handle deployment of the SSIS package by copying the .dtsx file to the location you specified when you created the job.
Seems like there are so many different ways of automating one's build/deployment that it becomes difficult to parse through all the different scenarios that people support in tutorials on the web. So I wanted to present the question to the stackoverflow crowd ... what would be the best way to set up an automated build and deployment system using the following configuration:
Visual Studio 2008
Web Application Project
CruiseControl.NET
One of the first things I tried was to have CCnet automatically zip the output and copy it to the server, but then that requires manual work to unzip at the destination. However, if we try to copy all the files individually, then it could potentially take a long time if it's a large application (build server lives outside of the datacenter in our office ... I know).
Also of particular interest is how we would support multiple environments as we have dev, qa, uat, and then of course prod.
MSDeploy seems really interesting, but unless I'm interpreting the literature incorrectly, doesn't help in the scenario of deploying from the output of a build server. If anything, it seems like it'll be useful in deploying one build across a build farm ... but even for deploying from one environment to another, one would have to manually change config settings and web service URLs, etc.
I recently spent a few days working on automating deployments at my company.
We use a combination of CruiseControl, NAnt, MSBuild to generate a release version of the app. Then a separate script uses MSDeploy and XCopy to backup the live site and transfer the new files over.
Our solution is briefly described in an answer to this question Automate Deployment for Web Applications?
You might be interested in MSDeploy. Here's a Scott Hanselman post on this. It's only available as a technical preview at the moment (September 2008) but is worth evaluating against your requirements.
There is another new build tool (a very intelligent wrapper) called NUBuild. Its lightweight, open source and extremely easy to setup and provides almost no-touch maintenance. I really like this new tool and we have made it standard tool for our continuous build and integration process of our projects (we have about 400 projects across 75 developers). Try it out.
http://nubuild.codeplex.com/
Easy to use command line interface
Ability to target all .Net framework
version i.e. 1.1, 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5
Supports XML based configuration
Supports both project and file
references
Automatically generates the “complete
ordered build list” for a given
project – No touch maintenance.
Ability to detect and display
circular dependencies
Perform parallel build -
automatically decides which of the
projects in the generated build list
can be built independently.
Ability to handle proxy assemblies
Provides visual clue to the build
process e.g. showing “% completed”,
“current status” etc.
Generates detailed execution log both
in XML and text format
Easily integrated with
Cruise-Control.Net continuous
integration system
Can use custom logger like XMLLogger
when targeting 2.0 + version
Ability to parse error logs
Ability to deploy built assemblies to
user specified location
Ability to synchronize source code
with source-control system
Version management capability
Do you have the ability to run commands remotely? The PsExec utility from Systinternals would let run a command line unzip program on the remote machine. If you have a script that copies the build as a .zip file to the remote site, you would just need one more line for the PsExec call to unzip the files.
I had a related question about getting a deployable set of files from an automated build. I found Web Deployment Projects (links and all in the old question) did what I needed - they're a VS and MSBuild add-on.
This is a common problem (and I wish I had read it sooner) for all development, not just ASP.NET. Being one of its developers, my team naturally uses BuildMaster internally for the entire release process, and for most scenarios it's free. Within the tool, we are able to perform all the standard CI builds to create artifacts and then set up an automation process to deploy these artifacts to any one of the 40+ servers we have internally or externally hosted, depending on the specific application or environment.
Since you specifically mentioned deployment to different testing environments, this is a fundamental aspect of the tool. The idea is to model the environment workflow (e.g. Integration -> QA -> Production) you already have in place and essentially promote a build all the way from source control to production. Most times, it's as simple as adding a deployment action that deploys an artifact to the environment, other times it can be much more complex.
You also casually mentioned configuration file changes are part of deployment, which is another built-in component to BuildMaster. The idea we had was to use the tool itself as the central hub for all configuration files and deployments, thus ensuring the latest changes are applied automatically with a simple "deploy configuration files" action in your deployment plan.
One thing you didn't mention with regard to this process is the database deployment aspect. Most ASP.NET applications require an associated database, otherwise they could just be static HTML files. It is crucial that the database schema gets updated to the appropriate database version with every deployment. There is, not surprisingly, a module within BuildMaster that handles this for you as well. The idea is to store DDL-DML scripts within the tool itself, and by executing scripts only once per environment, it ensures that all of your databases across each environment are up-to-date as your builds are deployed through them. Other scripts (e.g. stored procedures, views, triggers, etc.) are essentially code files and therefore belong in source control. These DROP-CREATE-CONFIGURE type scripts can be run each and every time in most cases with a simple deployment action.
Another piece of the deployment puzzle that most developers do not think about is process automation. Many developers need to perform sign-offs or fill out change request forms in order to manually perform these processes. Again, this is all available as part of the automated workflow setup within BuildMaster. You can setup blockers that do not allow promotion to say the QA environment unless all unit tests have passed, or block promotion to the Staging environment unless someone from the QA team approves the build and all issues in your issue tracking tool are resolved/closed for that particular release.
While I realize I left out CC.NET from the answer, our applications are all built and deployed through BuildMaster so we no longer need it, though we could however just as easily pickup the artifacts from a drop location and deploy them in later environments.
I see that many people use CC for their .NET projects, but why not use Jenkins, Sonarqube? They got all you need. I setup all this in 3 days. I have a Win 2008 server R2, MSSQL, Jenkins, VIsual SVN and Sonarqube.
It all works great and u get all metrics on your project. Sonarqube uses Gallio, Gendarme, FXcop, Stylecop, NDepths and PartCover to get your metrics and all this is pretty straight forward since SonarQube do this automatically without much configuration.
i post som pictures for u too get a feeling for it. Here is Jenkins witch builds and get Sonar metrics and a another job for deploying automatically to IIS
And Sonarqube, all metrics for my project. This is a simple MVC4 app, but it works great!:
If you want more information i can be more specific but i think you should at least consider jenkins. If CC suites you better, at least you looked at good alternative before you chose.
This whole setup uses MSBuild, too build and deploy the apps.