Windows Developer Power Tools

20.0 Introduction

If your application deals with databases, you have a whole world of additional issues to contend with. And because databases are a central component of so many applications, the odds are pretty good that you’ll have to address at least some of those issues.

Tasks you might need to think about include:

• Creating an empty database for storing your data

• Creating tables, stored procedures, views, and other objects in the database

• Creating keys between tables to support various schema relationships

• Configuring login privileges for the database

• Configuring access rights for objects in the database

• Writing connection strings to enable your software to communicate with the database

Many of these tasks can be accomplished through command-line utilities using statements in SQL’s Data Definition Language (DDL). DDL is immensely powerful, and it is the underpinning for the creation and management of all objects in a database. Using DDL, you can exercise great control over exactly how things are built in your database.

DDL scripts also enable you to automate creating database objects, or even creating the database itself. This means you can easily wrap database-object creation into an automated build or continuous integration process and make backups of your database structure.

While DDL has its place in your workflow, in most cases working directly with DDL is error-prone and inefficient. Why spend time typing script entries at a command prompt when you can use a GUI to quickly and easily ...