September 19, 2025 at 4:09 am
At work we've been getting better at writing what's known as GitHub Actions (workflows, YAML). I've got it deploying applications to websites, etc. It is cool.
One thing users would like to have is a means of deploying updates to SQL Server database objects using GitHub Actions. I've thought about this and have come up with some ideas, but then I realized that this problem has undoubtedly been solved before, and better than what I can come up with. So, I'm asking to be pointed to some resources where I can learn more on how to do this. At this point we're using what's known as GitHub Self-Hosted Runner, because all of our websites, applications, etc., are on-prem, in-house. So, the solutions must work within those constraints.
Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.
September 20, 2025 at 4:10 am
Thanks for posting your issue and hopefully someone will answer soon.
This is an automated bump to increase visibility of your question.
September 22, 2025 at 4:18 pm
There are a variety of tools out there. Some free, some not. Github actions with a self-hosted runner is essentially a command prompt. The runner will have an account, but it acts as if there is a command prompt and what you type in there is executed.
That's the basis of all this CI/CD/DevOps stuff.
How would you deploy code from a CLI?
September 29, 2025 at 5:29 pm
Hi Steve,
I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you. Last week I was gone to attend my mother's funeral. I'm back starting today, so am trying to get my feet under me.
Good questions. I'll answer your questions as best I can.
Our self-hosted runner is a Windows 2019 Server. Therefore, anything we write will be in PowerShell.
Back in the day, when Enterprise Manager was a thing (yes, I did use that) I did some command line coding, but not much. Since SSMS, the Azure Data Studio, and now msssql extension for VS Code have come out, I've not done a thing at the command line. The team I'm on which is creating GitHub Actions for the first app but will do so for other apps (and train other developers how to do so) are only now beginning to think about how to approach this problem. I see this as a real problem, because fundamentally it isn't like creating a YAML file which is fired off by creating a PR on a particular branch or running it with workflow_dispatch. There is no repeatability here, that I see, except at a meta level. (One or more changes need to be applied to table(s), view(s), SP, etc., but how do you trigger that and make it so that it doesn't repeat?) I am not speaking for the DBAs here, but I get the feeling they don't use the command line either. I could be wrong; I hope that I am.
Anyway, I hope that I've made it clearer as to the problems we're facing. I think it is developers not knowing how a DBA would do this, at the command line. I was hoping that maybe someone had written a GitHub extension that would handle this. But maybe I'm looking at GitHub Extensions, at least for what we're needing it to do, as a crutch.
Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.
Viewing 4 posts - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply