Disclosure: I work for Red Gate Software

Someone asked me the other day if I’d ever used SQL Packager to export a table to send to another person. I hadn’t, and in fact hadn’t even ever run the tool, but this individual said it worked great.

Since Red Gate tools are designed to be simple and intuitive, I thought I should give it a try and see what happens. I went through the Start Menu and found SQL Packager in my toolbelt installation:

I documented this as I went, shooting this images as I went through the process for the first time. As soon as Packager started, it began the packing wizard.

SQL Packager is designed to help you bundle up a database, or part of a database, as a part of an installation in your application. It can produce an .exe, a C# project, or a set of scripts that you can include as a distributable item in your application installation (or upgrade). The information can be compressed, so you reduce the requirements for your customers.

In my case, I decided to just package up a table. I first signed into my local instance, and chose the AdventureWorks database.

Next, I chose just one table, the Customers table. The Red Gate tools tend to follow a similar, intuitive design, and try to do the most common things for most customers. In this case, the entire database was selected (this is a database packaging tool), so I deselected all, and then chose the Customer table.

Once I choose the table and click next, and confirm the selection, the packaging begins. I get some options as to how I might choose to build my package.

The options are shown, and in this case I choose to save the script. Once I clicked next, I had a change to see the final script. First there was the schema tab:

On this tab, all the DDL for my table is there, including a couple dependent tables, and some functions needed for defaults or computer columns. Keys and indexes were included.

On the data tab, I had the DML for the actual data.

The comment says “Add 1000 rows”, which seems like a default. However I went back and checked in SSMS, and sure enough, my table had 1000 rows.

I clicked next, and had the chance to specify a save location.

After saving, I opened the script in SSMS, just to check. Sure enough, the DDL was at the top:

and the data at the bottom:

Simple, and easy.

If you are looking for a way to move certain sections of your database for a deployment, like all the lookup tables, give SQL Packager a try.

If you need to send some stuff to a client or friend, it might be a simple way as well to export the DDL and DML into one package.