Setting Build and Deploy Properties

By: Armando Prato

Overview

Before we can actually build and deploy, we must ensure the build and deploy properties of our project are set.

Explanation

Alas, before we deploy we need to prep the project for Build and Deploy actions. First we need to edit the project properties by choosing DemoDB Properties... from the Project menu strip item:

This produces the Project Settings screen which includes options to set Build and Deploy properties.

Choosing the Build option, we see the following:

We see options to specify a build output path which is where the build files will go in relation to where you installed your project. This location can be overridden to any file location. The build output name references the .dbschema file name that will house the results of the build action. This is an XML file that is generated during build that contains all the objects that make up our project. We'll leave these options alone.

Clicking on Deploy, we see deployment related options. Let's focus on the Deploy action and Target Connection. For the deployment to actually create the database, we need to make sure this option creates a script and deploys it to the database. Otherwise, a script will be generated but won't be deployed. In addition, we need to set the target database connection. Choosing Edit, you can specify the SQL Server instance you wish to deploy to.

We are finally ready to deploy the database.