General Plan for Continuous Integration with Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS), Visual Studio Online (VSO), SQL Server (SS), and Entity Framework (EF).
rough outline
- Script (existing) database schema - Can be done manually with SSMS, but the goal of this project is to do it consistently and reliably (via the command line).
- Check-in script(s) with related code (back-end, etc.) changes.
- Utilize Visual Studio Online (VSO), or another CI server, to spin up a an empty, temporary database, based on checked in scripts (in a specific directory).
- Call the Entity Data Model Generator EdmGen.exe on that database, to generate (or update?) the EF data model (edmx) for the subject code project.
- As part of the subject code project's build process (in VSO or other CI server), run all T4 templates - Code Generation in a Build Process.
- Compile and build the project as usual.
- Run any tests, etc.
- Tear down the temporary database.
- The database schema scripts will remain in source control (this will version the database, regardless of the database update paradigm (migrations, etc.) used).