How to create database project from existing SQL Server database?

Question

By using VS TFS Database Edition 2008, how to create dbproject from an existing SQL SERVER database?

Answer 1

There no direct, built-in support to do that, unfortunately.

You can get close by doing this:

• in SQL Server Management Studio, go to the Object Explorer, right-click on the database you want, and pick Tasks > Generate Scripts
• select all the database objects you want to script out
• at the end, choose to generate the scripts into separate files for each db object

What you end up with are a number of .sql scripts in a folder of your choice, which basically represent your database.

Next:

• create a Database Project in Visual Studio 2008
• once you've done that, add the existing scripts to that project

It's a bit more involved that it should be - but that's the only way that I know of to achieve this right now. Don't know if VS2010 will support this in an easier way....