In May 2020, our colleague Jonathan Mezach launched an open-source project on behalf of R&R. This project is called “MSBuild.Sdk.SqlProj” and has been quite successful on “GitHub,” an online platform for sharing code. It has surpassed the 100,000-download mark, and we are, of course, proud of that.
At R&R WFM, we use Microsoft's SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) to manage changes to our database. We made this decision when we switched from the Oracle database to SQL Server a few years ago. At that time, SSDT was the most mature tool available that allowed us to use version control for our database changes.
Over time, we've written several scripts that allow developers to deploy their changes locally. We’ve also written scripts to automate deployment to Octopus Deploy’s test and production environments. This has always helped us implement our database changes in a controlled manner. But given the developments and changes on the Visual Studio side and its tools, it seems that the SSDT tools are falling behind.
One thing that bothered Jonathan is that it's not possible to install NuGet packages in an SQL project (.sqlproj). This would allow you, for example, to share dependencies within the .NET ecosystem or modify the MSBuild process.
So Jonathan set out to build it himself. Fortunately, the underlying technology, DacFx, had a public API that allowed him to start building a solution.
Jonathan managed to develop a working solution in several steps. He then uploaded it to NuGet so that others could try it out and test it. It had already been thoroughly tested in various scenarios, but of course there are always scenarios that haven't been covered yet.
After its launch, the open-source project quickly gained momentum and received positive reactions and feedback. This led to further development of the solution and new versions with new features. The open-source community also helped us with 35 external “contributions.” We are very happy and grateful for this. For us, this also demonstrates the power and great potential of open source.
What began as a personal project to find a solution for challenging situations with SQL Server Data Tools has grown into a popular project on GitHub. It recently even surpassed the impressive milestone of 100,000 downloads.
We are, of course, proud of Jonathan and R&R's contribution to the open-source community and hope that it will help others. Given the number of downloads and the positive feedback, this seems to be the case.
In addition, Jonathan's project has been a great help to us in managing changes to our database. So it's a nice win-win situation.
Open-source technology has many advantages and is used in many areas of the technology sector. Think of operating systems for cell phones (e.g., Android) or content management systems (CMS) for websites (e.g., WordPress). The major advantage of open source is that it can be “further developed” by a large community and is therefore constantly improved and enhanced with new features.
At R&R, we see many opportunities in the open-source space. We therefore plan to regularly share suitable components of our software with the open-source community. Jonathan's MSBuild.Sdk.SqlProj project is a great start, and we look forward to seeing how it develops.
Would you like to learn more (technical) details about this project? Please visit: https://github.com/rr-wfm/MSBuild.Sdk.SqlProj
