Microsoft SQL Server Data-Tier Application Framework (DacFx) Nuget Package

Overview

The Microsoft SQL Server Data-Tier Application Framework (DacFx) is a .NET library which provides application lifecycle services for database development and management for Microsoft SQL databases. DacFx supports various database deployment and management scenarios, including extracting / exporting a live database to a DAC package, deploying a DAC package to a new or existing database, and migrating from on-premises to Microsoft Azure. DacFx can target all supported versions of SQL Server, as well as Microsoft Azure SQL and SQL in Fabric.

📘 DacFx .NET API documentation

📗 SQL projects database DevOps documentation

If you would like to use DacFx functionality from the command-line for creating and deploying .dacpac and .bacpac packages, please use the SqlPackage CLI as a dotnet tool or downloadable exe. Learn more about SqlPackage from http://aka.ms/sqlpackage.

Usage

The following examples demonstrate some basic functionality of the DacFx API. For more detailed examples, please refer to the DacFx API documentation.

Example: Deploy a .dacpac to a database

using Microsoft.SqlServer.Dac;

string dacpacPath = "path\\to\\your.dacpac";
string connectionString = "your-database-connection-string";
DacServices dacServices = new DacServices(connectionString);
DacPackage dacPackage = DacPackage.Load(dacpacPath);
dacServices.Deploy(dacPackage, "TargetDatabaseName", upgradeExisting: true);

Example: Extract a database to a .dacpac

using Microsoft.SqlServer.Dac;
string connectionString = "your-database-connection-string";
string dacpacOutputPath = "path\\to\\output.dacpac";
DacServices dacServices = new DacServices(connectionString);
DacExtractOptions extractOptions = new DacExtractOptions();
dacServices.Extract(dacpacOutputPath, "SourceDatabaseName", "SourceDatabaseName", extractOptions);

Example: Extract a database to .sql files organized by object type and schema