This is going to be a quick post to show how to configure DbUp to create a new database on top of the migration functionality we have covered in the past. Use the following post to catch up on the DbUp topics we have covered in the past.

Database Migrations with DbUp
Code-based Database Migrations with DbUp
Always Run Migrations with DbUp
Logging Script Output with DbUp
Migrations in Transactions with DbUp

Database Creation

The code for database creation is a one-liner that just needs a connection string and should be run before any migrations. The following is part of our Main function for the sample application we have been working with with the EnsureDatabase line added and highlighted which is the code that takes care of database creation.

static int Main(string[] args)
{
    var connectionString =
        args.FirstOrDefault()
        ?? "Server=localhost; Database=WideWorldImporters; Trusted_connection=true";

    EnsureDatabase.For.SqlDatabase(connectionString);

    var upgrader =
        DeployChanges.To
                     .SqlDatabase(connectionString)
                     .WithScriptsAndCodeEmbeddedInAssembly(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly(),
                                                           f => !f.Contains(".AlwaysRun."))
                     .LogToConsole()
                     .WithTransaction()
                     .Build();

    var result = upgrader.PerformUpgrade();

Wrapping Up

As you can see it is simple to add the ability to create databases in your DbUp applications. Database creation in the official DbUp docs is just a note and is easy to miss so I wanted to do a post to call it out as it is a powerful feature when you need it. In our example, the application will always attempt to create the database if it doesn’t exist, but if that doesn’t fit your use case it might be worth wrapping database creation in an argument so the user could decide if the database should be created or not.

This post will be continuing our exploration of DbUp with the addition of transactions as part of migration execution. If you are new to DbUp check out the following post to catch up on this series.

Database Migrations with DbUp
Code-based Database Migrations with DbUp
Always Run Migrations with DbUp
Logging Script Output with DbUp

Transaction Types and Restrictions

DbUp has three different options for transactions. The default is no transaction, which is what we have been using so far. The other two options are a transaction per migration and finally a single transaction for all the migrations in a single upgrader. As far as I can tell so far there is no way to use the same transaction across multiple upgraders so that means in our sample application we could have our normal migrations work correctly and get committed, but have an issue in our always run migrations. The other thing to keep in mind is that some database providers don’t support transactions when changing the structure of the database. As pointed out by the DbUp docs, the Postgres docs have a good summary of transactional support for DDL of different database providers.

Adding Transactions

In the following example, we have changed the upgrader to use a single transaction. This is the full code for the upgrader with the change highlighted.

var upgrader =
    DeployChanges.To
                 .SqlDatabase(connectionString)
                 .WithScriptsAndCodeEmbeddedInAssembly(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly(),
                                                       f => !f.Contains(".AlwaysRun."))
                 .LogToConsole()
                 .WithTransaction()
                 .Build();

The other options are WithTransactionPerScript for, surprise, a transaction per migration, and WithoutTransaction for no transactions (or just leave it out since this is the default value). The following is a sample of the output with transactions on with two different upgraders in play and the begin transactions highlighted.

Beginning transaction
Beginning database upgrade
Checking whether journal table exists..
Fetching list of already executed scripts.
No new scripts need to be executed - completing.
Beginning transaction
Beginning database upgrade
Executing Database Server script 'DbupTest.Scripts.AlwaysRun.01-EverytimeNoPrints.sql'
Executing Database Server script 'DbupTest.Scripts.AlwaysRun.02-EverytimeNoPrintsNoCountOn.sql'
Executing Database Server script 'DbupTest.Scripts.AlwaysRun.03-EverytimePrints.sql'
Executing Database Server script 'DbupTest.Scripts.AlwaysRun.04-EverytimePrintNoCountOn.sql'
Upgrade successful
Success!

Wrapping Up

DbUp makes adding transactions to your migrations super simple so this was a really short post. It would be nice to have an option to use a transaction across multiple upgraders. The official DbUp docs on transactions can be found here.

In today’s post, we will be going over how to log script output during a DbUp run. If you are new to this series of posts or DbUp in general you might find the following post helpful to review.

Database Migrations with DbUp
Code-based Database Migrations with DbUp
Always Run Migrations with DbUp

Enable Script Output Logging

I will be using the always run migrations we covered last weekend to simplify testing, but the concepts are the same for normal migrations. The change to enable script output logging is a single line added to our upgrader setup as you can see with the highlighted line in the following code.

var alwaysRunUpgrader =
    DeployChanges.To
                 .SqlDatabase(connectionString)
                 .WithScriptsAndCodeEmbeddedInAssembly(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly(), 
                                                       f => f.Contains(".AlwaysRun."))
                 .JournalTo(new NullJournal())
                 .LogToConsole()
                 .LogScriptOutput()
                 .Build();

Running the application will result in something like the following. Notice the records affected line which is the output from our migration.

Beginning database upgrade
Checking whether journal table exists..
Fetching list of already executed scripts.
No new scripts need to be executed - completing.
Beginning database upgrade
Executing Database Server script 'DbupTest.Scripts.AlwaysRun.Everytime.sql'
RecordsAffected: 0

Upgrade successful
Success!

Improve the Script Output

So the above is great for a simple migration that has a single statement, but for more complex migrations it might be helpful to use PRINT statements to provide more information. Let’s tweak our script to print the start and end times of the execution. The following is the sample script (and yes I know it would never actually update anything).

PRINT CONVERT(VarChar, GETDATE(), 121)  + ' Start every time';

UPDATE Application.Cities SET CityName = 'Nothing' WHERE 1 = 0;

PRINT CONVERT(VarChar, GETDATE(), 121)  +  + ' End every time';

The above migration results in the following output.

Beginning database upgrade
Checking whether journal table exists..
Fetching list of already executed scripts.
No new scripts need to be executed - completing.
Beginning database upgrade
Executing Database Server script 'DbupTest.Scripts.AlwaysRun.Everytime.sql'
2020-08-05 06:15:21.877 Start every time

2020-08-05 06:15:21.877 End every time

RecordsAffected: 0

Upgrade successful
Success!

The prints are helpful, but the records affected is noise in this case, especially since it is the records affected for the last statement and does print per SQL statement. To suppress the records affected message we and use SET NOCOUNT ON in our script like the following.

SET NOCOUNT ON;

PRINT CONVERT(VarChar, GETDATE(), 121)  + ' Start every time with NoCount ON';

UPDATE Application.Cities SET CityName = 'Nothing' WHERE 1 = 0;

PRINT CONVERT(VarChar, GETDATE(), 121)  +  + ' End every time with NoCount ON';

SET NOCOUNT OFF;

And as you can see in the following we got a cleaner output.

Beginning database upgrade
Checking whether journal table exists..
Fetching list of already executed scripts.
No new scripts need to be executed - completing.
Beginning database upgrade
Executing Database Server script 'DbupTest.Scripts.AlwaysRun.Everytime.sql'
2020-08-05 06:38:18.863 Start every time

2020-08-05 06:38:18.863 End every time

Upgrade successful
Success!

Wrapping Up

Logging the output of scripts can be really helpful at times, but if you are going to use it as we saw above it is important to make sure and plan what that output is going to look like. Having 500 instances of the number of records affected isn’t necessarily helpful.

In this post, we are going to walk through how to use DbUp to run specific migrations on every run instead of just once. If you are new to DbUp check out the following post to see how the sample project got to its current state.

Database Migrations with DbUp
Code-based Database Migrations with DbUp

Differentiating for Always Run

One of the keys to getting migrations that should run every time is being able to identify them separately from migrations that should only run once. This can be done at either the filename level or by placing all the always run files in a specific directory. This sample is going with the directory methods, but the file method would work basically the same way. In the sample project under the existing Scripts directory, I added an AlwaysRun directory. I also added an example script in this directory so we could verify that it is getting executed on every run. In the sample, the file is named Everytime.sql.

Based on the above when DbUp is processing it will see Everytime.sql as DbupTest.Scripts.AlwaysRun.Everytime.sql.

Filtering Out Always Run

Now that we have a way to identify the migrations we want to always run we need to filter them out of the existing upgrade process so that they don’t get included in the log of already executed migrations. In DbUp this log is referred to as the journal. The extension methods that setup how migrations will be located, either WithScriptsEmbeddedInAssembly or WithScriptsAndCodeEmbeddedInAssembly in our examples, can be provided with a filter which we will use to exclude migrations that are in the AlwaysRun directory. The following code is the upgrader with the filter in place.

var upgrader =
    DeployChanges.To
                 .SqlDatabase(connectionString)
                 .WithScriptsAndCodeEmbeddedInAssembly(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly(),
                                                       f => !f.Contains(".AlwaysRun."))
                 .LogToConsole()
                 .Build();

var result = upgrader.PerformUpgrade();

Executing Always Run Migrations

Now that we have adjusted our original upgrader to exclude migrations in the AlwaysRun directory we need something to execute the always run migrations. To accomplish this we add a second upgrader that is filtered just to AlwaysRun scripts. The second really important bit about this second upgrader is that it uses a NullJournal. The NullJournal is what keeps the execution of the scripts from being logged which results in them always getting run. The following code was inserted after the above code. The highlighted bits point out the filter and null journal.

if (result.Successful)
{
    var alwaysRunUpgrader =
        DeployChanges.To
                     .SqlDatabase(connectionString)
                     .WithScriptsAndCodeEmbeddedInAssembly(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly(),
                                                           f => f.Contains(".AlwaysRun."))
                     .JournalTo(new NullJournal())
                     .LogToConsole()
                     .Build();

    result = alwaysRunUpgrader.PerformUpgrade();
}

The following is the full Main function just in case the above code didn’t give enough context on how the code should fit together.

static int Main(string[] args)
{
    var connectionString =
        args.FirstOrDefault()
        ?? "Server=localhost; Database=WideWorldImporters; Trusted_connection=true";

    var upgrader =
        DeployChanges.To
                     .SqlDatabase(connectionString)
                     .WithScriptsAndCodeEmbeddedInAssembly(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly(),
                                                           f => !f.Contains(".AlwaysRun."))
                     .LogToConsole()
                     .Build();

    var result = upgrader.PerformUpgrade();

    if (result.Successful)
    {
        var alwaysRunUpgrader =
            DeployChanges.To
                         .SqlDatabase(connectionString)
                         .WithScriptsAndCodeEmbeddedInAssembly(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly(), 
                                                               f => f.Contains(".AlwaysRun."))
                         .JournalTo(new NullJournal())
                         .LogToConsole()
                         .Build();

        result = alwaysRunUpgrader.PerformUpgrade();
    }

    if (!result.Successful)
    {
        Console.ForegroundColor = ConsoleColor.Red;
        Console.WriteLine(result.Error);
        Console.ResetColor();
#if DEBUG
        Console.ReadLine();
#endif                
        return -1;
    }

    Console.ForegroundColor = ConsoleColor.Green;
    Console.WriteLine("Success!");
    Console.ResetColor();

    return 0;
}

Wrapping Up

With the above changes we now have a project that can run normal migrations, code-base migrations, and always run migrations. No matter what style of database change management you decide on having the changes in some sort of source control system will be super helpful.

For more information on DbUp’s journalling check out the official docs.

In today’s post, we are going to check out the code-based migration feature of DbUp which allows code to run as part of the migration process instead of just SQL based scripts. The ability to run code as part of the migration provides a ton of flexibility in the migration process. This builds on last week’s post, Database Migrations with DbUp, make sure and check it out if you are new to DbUp.

Script Provider Change

In our example application from last week’s post in the Program class when setting up our upgrader we used the following setup.

var upgrader =
    DeployChanges.To
                 .SqlDatabase(connectionString)
                 .WithScriptsEmbeddedInAssembly(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly())
                 .LogToConsole()
                 .Build();

The above only picks up embedded SQL type files. In order to also pick up code-based migrations we have to change from the WithScriptsEmbeddedInAssembly script provider to WithScriptsAndCodeEmbeddedInAssembly. The following is the upgrader with the new script provider highlighted.

var upgrader =
    DeployChanges.To
                 .SqlDatabase(connectionString)
                 .WithScriptsAndCodeEmbeddedInAssembly(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly())
                 .LogToConsole()
                 .Build();

Code-based Migrations

To add a code-based migration add a new class and set it to implement DbUp’s IScript interface. The script provider we changed to above will pick up any non-abstract class that implements IScript as well as SQL script files. The results are combined and sorted by name to determine execution order so make sure whatever naming convention you pick will sort properly for both your SQL scripts as well as code.

The IScript interface defines a single function, ProvideScript, that has a single parameter that provides a function to create a database command and returns a string. Depending on the need you can return a string with the SQL to be executed or you can create a command and execute any commands you need directly on the database or some combination of both if needed.

To test out code-based migrations, I added the following new class in the Scripts folder. It doesn’t actually change any data but instead logs some information to the console. Even without changing data it still conveys how code-based migrations work.

using System;
using System.Data;
using DbUp.Engine;

namespace DbupTest.Scripts
{
    public class Code0002Test : IScript
    {
        public string ProvideScript(Func<IDbCommand> dbCommandFactory)
        {
            using (var cmd = dbCommandFactory())
            {
                cmd.CommandText = "SELECT DeliveryMethodName FROM Application.DeliveryMethods";

                using (var dr = cmd.ExecuteReader())
                {
                    Console.WriteLine("  Delivery Methods");

                    while (dr.Read())
                    {
                        Console.WriteLine($"    {dr["DeliveryMethodName"]}");
                    }
                }
            }

            return string.Empty;
        }
    }
}

The following is the console output from running the application.

Beginning database upgrade
Checking whether journal table exists..
Fetching list of already executed scripts.
  Delivery Methods
    Air Freight
    Chilled Van
    Courier
    Customer Collect
    Customer Courier to Collect
    Delivery Van
    Post
    Refrigerated Air Freight
    Refrigerated Road Freight
    Road Freight
Executing Database Server script 'DbupTest.Scripts.Code0002Test.cs'
Checking whether journal table exists..
Upgrade successful
Success!

Wrapping Up

The ability to run code as part of the database migration process is an awesome set of functionality. I would advise sticking with SQL based migrations as default and only using code when SQL doesn’t provide a way to do what is needed or doing the migration in code is much more understandable. Make sure and check out the official DbUp docs on this feature for more information.

Managing database schemas can be a challenging problem. It is also an area where there is no one size fits all solution (not sure that is ever really true for anything). Solutions range from manual script management, database vendor-specific options (such as DACPAC for Microsoft SQL Server), to migrations. This post will be looking at one of the options for a migration based approach using DbUp.

Sample Database

I needed a sample database to start off with so I dug up one of my posts for Getting a Sample SQL Server Database to guide me through getting Microsoft’s WideWorldImporters sample database downloaded and restored.

DbUp Console Application

There are quite a few ways DbUp can be used, for this example, we are going to be using it from a .NET Core Console application. From a terminal use the following command to create a new console application in the directory you want the application in.

dotnet new console

Now we can use the following command to add the DbUp NuGet package to the sample project. In this case, we are using the SQL Server package, but there are packages for quite a few database providers so install the one that is appropriate for you.

dotnet add package dbup-sqlserver

Next, open the project in Visual Studio (or any editor but part of how this example is setup is easier in Visual Studio). In the Program class replace all the code with the following. We will look at a couple big of this code that below.

using System;
using System.Linq;
using System.Reflection;
using DbUp;

namespace DbupTest
{
    class Program
    {
        static int Main(string[] args)
        {
            var connectionString =
                args.FirstOrDefault()
                ?? "Server=localhost; Database=WideWorldImporters; Trusted_connection=true";

            var upgrader =
                DeployChanges.To
                             .SqlDatabase(connectionString)
                             .WithScriptsEmbeddedInAssembly(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly())
                             .LogToConsole()
                             .Build();

            var result = upgrader.PerformUpgrade();

            if (!result.Successful)
            {
                Console.ForegroundColor = ConsoleColor.Red;
                Console.WriteLine(result.Error);
                Console.ResetColor();
#if DEBUG
                Console.ReadLine();
#endif                
                return -1;
            }

            Console.ForegroundColor = ConsoleColor.Green;
            Console.WriteLine("Success!");
            Console.ResetColor();

            return 0;
        }
    }
}

The bit below is trying to pull the connection string for SQL Server out of the first argument passed from the terminal to the application and if no arguments were passed in then it falls back to a hardcoded value. This works great for our sample, but I would advise against the fallback value for production use. It is always a bad day when you think your migrations have run successfully but it was on the wrong database because of a fall back value.

var connectionString = 
    args.FirstOrDefault() 
    ?? "Server=localhost; Database=WideWorldImporters; Trusted_connection=true";

This next section is where all the setup happens for which database to deploy to, where to find the scripts to run, and where to log. There are a lot of options provided by DbUp in this area and I recommend checking out the docs under the More Info section for the details.

var upgrader =
    DeployChanges.To
                 .SqlDatabase(connectionString)
                 .WithScriptsEmbeddedInAssembly(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly())
                 .LogToConsole()
                 .Build();

Finally, the following is where the scripts are actually executed against the database.

var result = upgrader.PerformUpgrade();

The rest of the function is dealing with displaying to the console the results of the scripts running.

Adding Scripts

Keep in mind that we are using the Embedded Scripts option so DbUp is going to find all the embedded files that end with ‘.sql’. I have added a Scripts directory to the project so the scripts don’t clutter the root of the project, but that isn’t a requirement. Do not that how the files are named will control the order in which the scripts get executed so make sure you establish a good naming convention upfront. For our sample, I added a file named 0001-TestScript.sql to the Scripts directory. Since we are using the embedded scripts provider it is critical that after adding the file we go to its properties and set the Build Action to Embedded resource.

The script file itself doesn’t do anything in this case except select a value.

Trying it out

At this point, we can hit Run in Visual Studio and it will execute our new script. The output will look something like the following.

If we were to run the application again it would tell us that no new scripts need to be executed. DbUp like all migration based solutions I have encountered use a table in the database to keep a record of what migrations have been run. The default table for DbUp is SchemaVersion and it consists of an Id, ScriptName, and Applied columns. Given this structure, it is important to keep in mind that if you rename a script that has already been executed on a database DbUp will see that as a different script and execute it again.

Wrapping Up

In the docs for DbUp there is a philosophy section and one of the points is that a database is a result of a set of transitions, not just its new state vs. its old state. This point is key to why I am a fan of a migration based approach.

Check out the DbUp docs and GitHub repo for more information.