I wrote recently on Git Push in SQL Source Control (SOC), and now wanted to add the other side of the story, pull. This process is even simpler.

I’ll be working with a new database, one that has two client systems set up already with Git support. I know I haven’t tackled that part of SOC and Git, but I’ll do that in a new post.

In this case, I’ve got a repository on Github for my Redgate and SQL in the City demos. It’s a sample database, but I’ve been making multiple changes to the database across time, using Version Control as a way of continuity, and then being able to rollback changes or see history.

I’ve got a connection in a VM to a second development machine. When I launch my VM, and SSMS, I go to the second SOC tab, the one that is labled “Get Latest.” You can see the image below, and notice that there are two buttons in the upper left. There is the familiar “Apply changes to database,” which has been the way that we pull changes from TFS and SVN, but now there is a new “Pull from remote respository.” This is the one specific to Git.

In this case, I’ve refreshed my database previously in sync with the local Git repo. Therefore the button is grayed out. However, I don’t know if there are remote changes until I click the other button.

I do that and get the familiar four step dialog from SOC that checks for changes and then compares them to the local database. However what you don’t see is that a “git pull” is issued first, pulling changes from the remote repo. In my case, I had one change I’d made in London, actually, and hadn’t synced with my VM.

This is the familiar SOC actions now where I see the changes and can use the “Apply changes to database” to compile this code in my local database.

In some sense, this is less exciting then push, but it’s nice to be able to do this in the client.

I’ll write some more on the workflow as I develop changes in the coming posts, which are going to be aimed at building a small database in Azure SQL database and moving changes from my local system to Git for tracking, and then to Azure for production use.

Filed under: Blog Tagged: Git, Redgate, SQL Source Control, syndicated, version control