Understanding SQL Server Data Tools

Challenges in Designing Databases

One of the inconvenient truthd of databases is: databases are hard to design. Getting everything done easily and correctly is a huge challenge in database design. There are several challenges regarding database design and implementation.

Some of the challenges that developers encounter during database design and modeling are as follows:



DEPENDENCIES

Dependencies are one of the most common problems that occur in a database, or we can say that a database is full of dependencies. These dependencies in a database are due to these issues:

• Schema
• Object
• Field / Attributes
• Common Set of Values

 

These sets of challenges cause changes in a database. Due to these the simplest changes or updates in a databases becomes complex and confusing. So they tend to produce incorrect results when they pass through a query.

LATE ERROR DETECTION

Either you can spend your time building complex and vast scripts for a databases or you can simply solve them through simple implementation processing, but when you try to deploy them in the databases, you may got an error or your script for that specific database may not work properly and gives an error.

But you have an issue somewhere that does not manifest itself until the user encounters a runtime error.

DRIFT DETECTION

The database is not constant, it needs several changes, modifications and updates in a timely fashion. After deployment a procedure it is generally common to DataBase Administration (DBA) to come along and make general modifications, updates in the database.

For example, adding indexes to improve query performance against specific tables. When the environment falls out of synchronization, the database is in a different state than you and your application expects it to be.

(Those updates or changes in the database table need to be reflected or identified during the synchronization procedure.)

VERSIONING

Developers have grown to be accustomed to working with the changes or modifications in the database table or indexes in the script. These changes will be reflected in the synchronization somehow, but how you maintain the definition across multiple versions of your applications is very difficult to revert to a point in time and recall an earlier version of the database that matches up with an earlier version of an application.

So through these you can’t easily synchronize versions and version history between your database and application.

DEPLOYEMENT

There are challenges in targeting multiple versions, including most recently SQL Azure. You may not need to deploy the same database out to multiple locations and must account for varying compatibility levels when multiple locations are running multiple versions of SQL Server. Some of the SQL Servers are:

• SQL Server 2005
• SQL Server 2008
• SQL Server 2008 R2
• SQL Server 2012
• SQL Server 2013
• SQL Azure

 

Many of these points or problems are rooted in the notion that the database is stateful. Every time you build and run any .NET application, website or anything else in Visual Studio. It is always initialized to the same NEW state but as soon as the application goes off to access the database, it’s the same as the old database with the same schema and data in it.

SOLUTION

The solution to all these problems is SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT). It allows you to work with a declaration of what you believe the database to be in reality. This allows you to maintain your focus on the design issues of your application while on the other hand the SSDT tool take care of writing or updating the appropriate changes in that script. These changes will be safely applied to your designed module.