Lately we have created several data marts in Azure SQL that will be fed from a data warehouse hosted on premises. The data mart is first created and tested locally so that we can get the structure and required stored procs correct. Whilst we are doing this it is easy to quickly transfer representative data to test the efficiency. Every...

Quite often when creating a database you will need tables of static data.  These range from simple lookups to date dimensions in a data warehouse.  You can easily create these in an SSDT project.Presuming you have already designed your tables and they are present in your project;Create a folder in your project called StaticData then add a sql script...

If you are creating a sql server project with SSDT (see here) and your sql refers to another database you will need to add a database reference to allow the project to build. You can do this by right clicking your references folder and selecting 'Add Database Reference' If the database you are referring to is also a part of the...

There are all sorts of reasons why this is a good idea.  Not least because you can version control, unit test and tie into your CI system any existing database. How many times have you found inconsistencies between a test and live database, not known which one is right and been unsure who to ask on your team?  In my...

I have just spent the last few days trying to get a SQL Project to build, deploy, run unit tests and create a dacpac on our build server which uses TeamCity. It wasn't a simple process and I had to accept a few conditions that I wasn't overly keen on but the upshot is that it works now and...

Ok, so you've missed it this year, but next year... Go to SQLBits! I can't say it enough.  It is the best conference in Europe for learning SQL, it is extremely cheap. it is non-profit and it's a lot of fun.  I've been going for the past 5 years and have never regretted it. This year was no exception, the conference...