I have been using msdeploy for years for automating ASP.NET deployments, I always knew it was a clever/cool tool, but I really had no idea of the depth!

I had a bit of an issue very recently whereby I needed to get structure and data from a SQL CE SDF database file (don't ask!!). I thought this was going to burn a morning - obviously my Google fu kicked in and I found a useful article on migrating between database formats. This pointed me to using msdeploy command line, so reading the docs to see what I could do I was surprised to see the depth – just look at al the providers available!

I ended up running a simple command line to extract a full SQL Server DDL/DML script allowing me to create a copy of the database wherever.

msdeploy -verb:sync -source:dbFullSql="Data Source={{ Path to SDF file! }}",sqlCe=true -dest:dbFullSql="{{ Path to output file}}"

Script generated and full SQL DB created in less than five minutes from opening the browser tab!

This is definitely a tool to have in your utility belt…