ApexSQL DevOps toolkit

ApexSQL DevOps toolkit is free. No additional licenses are required, other than your existing ApexSQL tools.

The ApexSQL DevOps toolkit provides all the steps you would ever need to customize your pipelines, including:

1. Commit
2. Build
3. Populate
4. Audit
5. Test
6. Review
7. Document
8. Data sync
9. Schema sync
10. Publish
11. Deploy
12. Notify

Currently the ApexSQL DevOps toolkit offers full documentation of the newly created database. In version 2.0 we will allow for documentation of changes only.

Builds can be triggered in three ways:

1. Manually, by starting the Build step on demand
2. On schedule, for example nightly
3. Automatically, triggered directly from source control changes

Output from every step is automatically saved in a centralized folder, that can be configured either through the PowerShell scripts or the dashboard. Each pipeline run will create new
...\PipelineName\Timestamp subfolders for all output files from that run.

Yes. In the abovementioned centralized folder, a log file will be created for every workflow pipeline run, containing all summary information like when it was run, execution results about the individual steps and eventual errors encountered.

Yes. If the “Abort on fail” option is selected, when any step of the workflow encounters an error, the pipeline will stop. If this option is not checked, the process will ignore the error and move on to the next pipeline step.

Yes. The complete set of the ApexSQL DevOps toolkit PowerShell scripts and cmdlets are available for download

Initially, the following parameters have to be set:

1. Data sources
2. ApexSQL notification options, that include the e-mail account settings to be used by the Notify step
3. ApexSQL general options, like the pipeline name and output folder path

After that, each individual step can be configured with additional parameters, like ignoring certain objects, configuring synchronization options, modifying the generated documentation etc.

The ApexSQL DevOps toolkit Dashboard provides separate CI and CD templates, which differ in the steps they include:

1. For CI, the included steps are: Notify, Build, Populate, Audit, Test, Review and Notify
2. For CD, the available steps are: Notify, Schema sync, Data sync, Document, Package, Deploy and Notify

In the ApexSQL DevOps toolkit Dashboard’s main window, a progress bar will be shown next to each step indicating whether it is completed or running.

By configuring the Notify step with the appropriate parameters, you will be notified via e-mail if any of the steps fails and provided with the error description.

The most popular Build servers are supported with our plug-ins: Bamboo, Jenkins, TeamCity, Team Foundation Server / Azure DevOps as well as Octopus Deploy through custom PowerShell templates.

This depends on the build server itself, as each one has different options regarding output files. Most often, all files will be saved in the build server agent’s folder, where the appropriate subfolders will be created for each pipeline.

Each build server has its own notification settings and templates that can be set up to keep you notified about the state of the pipeline or when an error is encountered.