Creating a New Database from Within a Stored Procedure

Question

Due to an employee quitting, I've been given a project that is outside my area of expertise.

I have a product where each customer will have their own copy of a database. The UI for creating the database (licensing, basic info collection, etc) is being outsourced, so I was hoping to just have a single stored procedure they can call, providing a few parameters, and have the SP create the database. I have a script for creating the database, but I'm not sure the best way to actually execute the script.

From what I've found, this seems to be outside the scope of what a SP easily can do. Is there any sort of "best practice" for handling this sort of program flow?

Answer 1

Generally speaking, SQL scripts - both DML and DDL - are what you use for database creation and population. SQL Server has a command line interface called SQLCMD that these scripts can be run through - here's a link to the MSDN tutorial.

Assuming there's no customization to the tables or columns involved, you could get away with using either attach/reattach or backup/restore. These would require that a baseline database exist - no customer data. Then you use either of the methods mentioned to capture the database as-is. Backup/restore is preferrable because attach/reattach requires the database to be offline. But users need to be sync'd before they can access the database.

Answer 2

If you got the script to create database, it is easy for them to use it within their program. Do you have any specific pre-requisite to create the database & set permissions accordingly, you can wrap up all the scripts within 1 script file to execute.