Update of SQL Server Database Publishing Toolkit for Web Hosting

A few months ago I posted about the new SQL Server Database Publishing Hosting Toolkit built and published by the SQL Server team.  You can read about what it offers and how to use it in these previous two blog posts of mine:

The SQL Server Hosting Toolkit is a free download that makes it super easy to create a .SQL script file capable of re-creating your database (including the schema, sprocs, and actual data content).  When it is installed you can simply right-click on a database inside Visual Studio or Visual Web Developer and walkthrough a wizard to script it out:

You can then FTP this script up to your remote server environment and execute it (my second post above shows a technique you can use even if you don't have admin access on the machine).  Alternatively, you can use the built-in web-service support provided by the database publishing wizard to directly export and copy the database over the Internet to your remote hosting provider.

SQL Server Database Publishing Toolkit V1.1 Update

Earlier this month the SQL team released a V1.1 update to the toolkit.  You can learn more about it and download it here.

The V1.1 update includes the following improvements:

• It adds the ability to select individual objects/tables for publishing in the wizard (and not have to create/recreate everything in the database each time)
• It improves performance up to 30-40% when scripting and publishing
• It delivers usability improvements when publishing over the Internet to a hosting provider
• It fixes several bugs submitted on the CodePlex forums

I'd definitely recommend checking it out.  If you are hosting your applications remotely today this free tool can be a super useful addition to your toolbox.

Thanks,

Scott

13 Comments

  • Can I please ask a couple of Q's on the legal implications in using the Codeplex offering AKA the SQL Server Database Publishing Toolkit. Why isn't this toolkit available as a download from the SQL Server website? Being a tad defensive, if I develop a database schema & T-SQL code, am I liable to forfeit any copyright on it if I use the offering to upload my schema and code i.e. am I obliged to make what I do available in the public domain? The toolkit is a great asset, that's clear, but I'm twitchy about using it (they say there's no such thing as a free lunch and all that).

  • Hi Rod,

    This particular download itself comes from the Microsoft.com web-site (the codeplex page points to Microsoft.com to download the binary).

    Regardless - the license of projects on CodePlex all allow you to use the projects for commercial purposes without giving up any of your IP. You don't have to worry about viral licenses that force you to give anything up.

    So you should definitely feel completely comfortable using this tool for any of your projects.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • This is one of those tools, where it would be nice to have the source. There are variations upon this theme that it would be nice to try.

  • Thanks for the update Scott.

    Are there any plans to integrate this with Management Studio? It would be nice to generate a .sql file with all the data right from Managment Studio.

  • good to know on the improvements in the tools. i particularly liked the feature to publish individual objects

  • Hi Amrinder,

    I believe the plan is to support this within SQL Management Studio in the future.

    We are also planning on building this support directly into Visual Studio "Orcas". This means you won't have to download this separate tool - it will just be built-in in the future.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Scott, many thanks for the clarification, it is much appreciated.

  • Hi

    Haven't downloaded and tested it yet. But have a quick question.

    Is there an option available like "Insert existing data into table", and it will beside the CREATE TABLE statement also add INSERT statements for the data in that table.

    /Thanks

  • Hi David,

    Yep - the database publishing tool above does have the ability to insert data from your existing table. This makes it super easy to create a script that will copy both your schema and existing data to a new system.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Hi, will it work with Godaddy shared hosting SQL accounts ?

  • Hi Dave,

    I believe this should work fine with your GoDaddy account.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Hi Scott,

    Does this product currently have the ability to compare a development database with a live database and make appropriate alterations to table structures and stored procedures etc to bring the two versions into sync ?

  • Hi Scott,
    I have been trying the tool, but my hosting company only host server 2000, my app db is sql express, so I want to convert to sql2000, but I keep getting an error "User-defined function fn_diagramobjects has the execution context of ExecuteAsUser that is not supported in the target database version, SQL Server2000" my app uses users/roles etc, do you have any idea if there is a way to overcome the error?

    Cheers

    Jack

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