managing live and develop database

Hello,

I haven written a Windows program in Visual Studio 2005. This program stores data in and retrieves data from a SQL Express database. The customer is starting to use the program and filling the database with data. However the program is still under construction (new functionality will be added) and so is the database (new tables, views etc. will be added).

Of course I could send the customer the new database, but than all data already entered will be lost.....

I'm thinking about using the SQL Management Studio Express and VS2005 to connect remotely to the database (a VPN connection is availabe) but worry about performance issues.... Or should I use some kind of replication / synchronization and how, because this is new to me.

What is the best way to solve this 'problem' ?

hi,

Silencer#1 wrote:

Hello,

I haven written a Windows program in Visual Studio 2005. This program stores data in and retrieves data from a SQL Express database. The customer is starting to use the program and filling the database with data. However the program is still under construction (new functionality will be added) and so is the database (new tables, views etc. will be added).

Of course I could send the customer the new database, but than all data already entered will be lost.....

I'm thinking about using the SQL Management Studio Express and VS2005 to connect remotely to the database (a VPN connection is availabe) but worry about performance issues.... Or should I use some kind of replication / synchronization and how, because this is new to me.

What is the best way to solve this 'problem' ?

the best article I've read about database versioning and related issue is available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/04/09/customdatabaseinstaller/ ... it support both "original" installation as successive metadata updates..

regards

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The short answer is that you should use scripts to update the schema of your deployed database. The article Andrea points to is a good one that discusses ways to deploy and update databases. A new tool to help you manage you database across versions and create scripts for upgrades is Visual Studio Team Systems for Database Professionals.

Mike

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After doing some research on the web I found out that InstallShield 12 from Macrovision is able to script SQL 2005 databases.

I have downloaed the trial version and created a sample installer and it worked perfectly !!. You can let the end-user specifiy the server to logon, how to log on (windows authentication or SQL login) and which catalog (database) to use.

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After a day of testing I found out that InstallShield works fine but is rather expensive !!
So I googled some more and ran into the products of Red Gate. They have several SQL products and one of them is called SQL Packager.
You can use this software to package your database or upgrade an existing database. You can package the database as a .NET executable or as an C# project.