I would like to find a way to create and populate a database during asp.net setup.
So, what I'm willing to do is:
Create the database during the setup
Populate the database with some initial data (country codes or something like that)
Create the appropriate connection string in the configuration file
I'm using .NET 3.5 and Visual Studio 2005, and the Database is SQL Server 2005.
Thanks in advance.
If you are creating an installer I'm sure there is a way to do it in there, but I am not all that familiar with that.
Otherwise, what you might do is the following.
Add a application_start handler in the Global.asax, check for valid connection string, if it doesn't exist, continue to step two.
Login to the server using a default connection string
Execute the needed scripts to create the database and objects needed.
Update the web.config with the connection information
The key here is determining what the "default" connection string is. Possibly a second configuration value.
Generally, you'll need to have SQL scripts to do this. I tend to do this anyway, as it makes maintaining and versioning the database much easier in the long run.
The core idea is, upon running the setup program, you'll have a custom action to execute this script. The user executing your setup will need permissions to:
Create a database
Create tables and other database-level objects in the newly-created database
Populate data
Your scripts will take care of all of that, though. You'll have a CREATE DATABASE command, the appropriate CREATE SCHEMA, CREATE TABLE, CREATE VIEW, etc. commands, and then after the schema is built, the appropriate INSERT statements to populate the data.
I normally break this into multiple scripts, but YMMV:
Create schema script
"Common scripts" (one for the equivalent of aspnet_regsql for web projects, one with the creation of the Enterprise Library logging tables and procs)
Create stored procedure script, if necessary (to be executed after the schema's created)
Populate initial data script
For future maintenance, I create upgrade scripts where a single script typically handles the entire upgrade process.
When writing the scripts, be sure to use the appropriate safety checks (IF EXISTS, etc) before creating objects. And I tend to make mine transactional, as well.
Good luck!
Well, actually I found a tutorial on MSDN: Walkthrough: Using a Custom Action to Create a Database at Installation
I'll use that and see how it goes, thanks for your help guys, I'll let you know how it goes.
If you can use Linq to Sql then this is easy.
Just import your entire database into the Linq to Sql designer. This will create objects that describe all objects in your database, including the System.Data.Linq.DataContext derived class that encapsulate the entire database setup.
Now you can call DataContext.CreateDatabase() to create the database.
See here more information.
Related
I'm developing a windows application which uses SQL Server Database. I have different versions of this application and they have different database structure, so I need to migrate database to the latest version on application start. I want to compare the database structure with the application model, then do alter, create or drop commands.
Also I want to use EF Code-First ORM, after some search I've figured it out that there are some useful commands and configs in code first. But the problem is, as I know, all of them drop the existing database and create a new one so the data will be lost while I need the data.
I used these lines in my application start function:
var migrator = new DbMigrator(new Configuration());
migrator.Update();
But after execution this line I will get this exception:
There is already an object named 'SomeTable' in the database.
I know that, it's right and there is that table but in structure is changed! How can I compare the structure and do the rest?
That's not how migrations work. You need a migration for every version of your database so EF can check the __MigrationHistory table and see if it has been applied. If your initializer is set to MigrateDatabaseToLatestVersion your database won't be recreated on model changes.
You could try to recreate the history: roll back to your oldest database, add a migration, add 2nd oldest version changes, create a 2nd migration, etc.
Another option is to add a migration for where you are now, generate a script (update-database -Script) then comment out the stuff that exists in each deployed database before applying it.
Yet another option would be to use the VS Schema compare utility against each database and your current database to get the changes over. Then apply a baseline migration to each (add-migration Initial -IgnoreChanges).
Now moving forward you can generate a series of migrations and your code should work as expected.
I want to add a module build on Code First to a running website, which already has an database. If I set my module to run on separated database, it works fine.
But my friend want to just "add" tables created by my modules to existing database, without adding a new database.
Is there anyway to archive that?
The solution is simple and very easy:
Run the module to create a new, clean database
Use SQL Server to generate sql scripts that create tables of that database. I personally think the metadata table is not needed
Run those scripts against target database
Modify the connection string to point to target database
Now it runs flawless! I'm so happy
Thank you.
We are thinking of moving some of the 'hard coded' settings out of our windows forms application and storing them in the sql database in a table called App_Settings. The reason for this is we have values currently hard coded into appsettings and app.config which can change over time, and it is much easier and faster to update the values in a database table than it is to update, build and deploy the app over three servers.
Please can someone advise on this, and also how can we load the settings into the app and then have them readily available in any class?
Cheers
Richard
Have a look at this similar thread: Resources/App.config or Database where is the best place to application strings
When you want to store settings in the database i would implement the class as Singleton or at least as a Class with only static/shared members and a factory method(getAppSettings)which returns that single/static instance. So you could access your settings from everywhere and it is only initialized once.
Why don't you use something like YAML to save these settings? It would be easy to create a form to edit and save these settings in a file, instead of a db (which would add more maintainance problems).
Otherwise, I would suggest to use something like NHibernate to use a database, and SQLLite as the db server.
Also, note that if you are updating these settings, I would not say that these are App_Settings, since App_Settings aren't usually modifyable without
Help this helps,
Pietro
The scenario is this. I have a SQL Server database online that I am demoing an application. During development, I have added extra fields, modified field types, changed keys and added some new tables locally.
What's the best way for me to update the online database with the new structure and not lose the data? The database is a SQL Server 2005 one.
Download a trial of Red Gate SQL Compare, compare your two servers and you are done. If you do this often, it is well worth the $400, or get one of their bundles for a better bang for the buck.
And I do not work for Red Gate, just a happy customer!
Write update scripts to modify your live database structure to the new structure, as well as inserting any data which is required.
You may find it necessary to use temporary tables to do this.
It's probably best if you test this process on a test environment, before running the scripts on the live environment.
Depending on what exactly you've done you may be able to get away with alter statements, though from the sounds of it (removing keys and whatnot) you're doing some heavy lifting that may make that a less-than-ideal solution. You should probably look into creating a maintenance plan or, better yet, a SQL Server Integration Services project in Visual Studio. You should be able to migrate the data in the existing database to a new one using those tools.
This probably isn't of huge help retrospectively, but I always script all structural DB changes to my development database and then using a version number to determine the current version of the DB I can run the required scripts on the live DB, hence bringing it back in line at the same time as the new code is uploaded.
This also works for any content changes, for instance if the change in the underlying structure has an effect on the conent stored you can also write scripts to migrate the data accordingly.
Make a copy of the existing database to copy from.
Make another copy and alter it to your new schema. save DDL for reuse.
Write queries that copy data from #1 to #2. Save the queries for reuse.
Check the results.
Repeat until done.
I am looking for the state.sql file provided by the .NET framework to run sessionstates in sqlserver mode. Where can I find the sql file to create the required tables and stored procs. I tried in the FRAMEWORKS/VERSION2.0 folder but I am unable to find it.
It's not state.sql anymore, but InstallSqlState.sql or InstallPersistSqlSate.sql.
Choose InstallSqlState.sql, if you would like to store your session data into tempdb (and thus to lose all sessions on every SQL Server restart). Or choose InstallPersistSqlState.sql if you would like to store them persistently.
This article has a great overview of both modes (temporary and persistent db), and the script is linked to from there also...