SqlPackage command-line Action

SqlPackage.exe is a command-line utility that automates validation and deployment of database projects for SQL Server, Azure SQL Database and Azure Synapse. This actions provides support for implement CI/CD workflows on GitHub Actions for database projects running on Azure. When combined with Visual Studio Database Projects, it provides a convenient way to define the desired state of a database and apply, deploy and evolve the schema in different databases on different environments.

When to use it

Use run-sqlpackage GitHub action to implement CI/CD workflows that automate the evolution of the schema in a database running on Azure. It provides tools to validate changes, detect data integration errors, data loss issues and perform changes in target databases accross different environments.

About database projects

You can use database projects to create new databases and to update existing databases enabling you to apply version control and project management techniques to your database development efforts in much the same way that you apply those techniques to managed or native code. You can help your development team manage changes to databases and database servers by creating a database project, or a server project and putting it under version control. Members of your team can then check out files to make, build, and test changes in an isolated development environment, or sandbox, before sharing them with the team. To help ensure code quality, your team can finish and test all changes for a particular release of the database in a staging environment before you deploy the changes into production.

How SqlPackage and Database Projects work together

The output of a database project is a file in dacpac extension, which describes the final desired state of a database. SqlPackage then can use such file to detect the evolution of the schema and compute the requered changes that need to be performed in a given target database in order to make it match the given final state described in the dacpac. By doing that, you keep on asset that describes you database, while SqlPackage compute the deltas for each target database that you want to deploy to.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• An Azure Synapse SQL Pool, Azure SQL Database or Azure SQL Managed Instance.
• If you are using SQL Authentication
  • A SQL Login created in the target database.
  • The SQL Login and SQL Password.
• If you are using Azure Active Directory Authentication
  • A Service Principal created in the tenant.
  • A database user created on the target database associated with the mentioned Service Principal. Follow the documentation at Create contained users mapped to Azure AD identities
  • An authentication token issued for the mentioned Service Principal and targeting the given database. You can use the GitHub Action azure-resource-login to generate such a token.
• A Visual Studio Database Project created either using Azure Data Studio, VS Code or Microsoft Visual Studio. See Working with an already existing database if you want to create a project based on an existing database.
• A publishing profile in the format of an XML file indicating how deployment should be done. A sample file is provided in the repository for your convenience.

Working with an already existing database

More often than not you are not starting a new database from scratch, but you already have a database from were you want to start from. If that's the case, then you can build a database project based on such existing database. Follow the documentation Create a database project from an existing database.

Inputs

Name	Description	Required
action	Action parameter to run with SqlPackage. Supported values are: Publish, DeployReport, DriftReport, Script.	true
sourcepath	The path where to look for the DACPAC file. If multiple files exists, all of them are processed.	true
profile	The publishing profile path to use during the execution (in xml format).	true
database-server	Database server URL (without protocol). If not indicated in the publishing profile, it has to be indicated here.	false
database-name	Database name. If not indicated in the publishing profile, it has to be indicated here.	false
authtoken	The authentication token used to connect to the database, if credentials not indicated in the connection string.	false
outputpath	The output folder where assets will be generated if any. If not indicated, the current path is used.	false
outputfile	The output file name. The final name of the file will be [dacpac_name].[outputfile]. The extension of the file depends on the action performed	false

Example usage

Generate a deployment report

id: deploy-report
name: Identifying proposed changes
uses: Azure/[email protected]
with:
   action: 'DeployReport'
   sourcepath: build
   outputpath: reports
   outputfile: 'deployreport.xml'
   profile: profile.xml
   authtoken: ${{ steps.sql-login.outputs.token }}

Note 1: The parameter authtoken is provided as the output of another step.

Note 2: The target database is not indicated in the action but in the profile. Parameters TargetConnectionString and TargetDatabaseName need to be supplied in the file profile.xml.

Deploy changes in a target database

id: deploy-target
name: Deploying changes to target
uses: Azure/[email protected]
with:
   action: 'Publish'
   sourcepath: build
   profile: profile.xml
   authtoken: ${{ steps.sql-login.outputs.token }}

Note 1: The parameter authtoken is provided as the output of another step.

Note 2: The target database is not indicated in the action but in the profile. Parameters TargetConnectionString and TargetDatabaseName need to be supplied in the file profile.xml.

Deploy changes in a target database specified as parameters

id: deploy-target
name: Deploying changes to target
uses: Azure/[email protected]
with:
   action: 'Publish'
   sourcepath: build
   profile: profile.xml
   database-server: mysynapse.sql.azuresynapse.net
   database-name: adventureworks
   authtoken: ${{ steps.sql-login.outputs.token }}

Note 1: The parameter authtoken is provided as the output of another step.

Note 2: In this example adventureworks is a database inside of the mysynapse Synapse Workspace.

Contributing

This project welcomes contributions and suggestions. Most contributions require you to agree to a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) declaring that you have the right to, and actually do, grant us the rights to use your contribution. For details, visit https://cla.opensource.microsoft.com.

When you submit a pull request, a CLA bot will automatically determine whether you need to provide a CLA and decorate the PR appropriately (e.g., status check, comment). Simply follow the instructions provided by the bot. You will only need to do this once across all repos using our CLA.

This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact [email protected] with any additional questions or comments.

Trademarks

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