SQL Server Hosting Toolkit CTP available

Dan announced this a little while back here.

One of the challenges that we did not really come up with a good solution for in SQL 2005 RTM was the following;

Develop an app locally on your machine using one of the VS Express SKUs(Primarily Visual Web Developer) along with SQL Express (where you are likely an admin), and then deploy that app and database to a hoster, who is likely not running SQL Express but Workgroup or Standard and where you are most likely not an admin for the database. Getting the code up there is pretty straight forward in VS 2005, but getting the database up can be a complete pain depending on the hoster and the perms.

In theory attach/detach is the fastest way to do this, but you need to be a high priv user for this to work, the same is true for backup and restore (although some hosters do support this), SMO also requires high priv rights. We had an abortive attempt at a solution around the time that SQL/VS RTM'd that involved SSIS but there was a lot of feedback that it was too complex and unwieldy.

Hence we built a prototype that went VERY low tech, it scripts the DB out as DDL statements and then generates insert statements for the data, it worked and it was simple (if a little slow for large DBs). Dan and his team have built a real product to handle the scenario, its not done yet but it looks v.handy check it out.

I wrote the prototype before leaving the SQL Team, if I can find the code I'll post it on codeplex or something, if nothing else it serves as a useful SMO sample.

Comments

• Anonymous
  November 06, 2006
  Sounds interesting.  I would be interested in reviewing the code if you find it. Thanks, Dave