SSDT allows for snapshots to be taken of the project at any point. Just right-click the project name and select the option to “Snapshot Project”.
This builds a dacpac file into a folder within the project called “Snapshots” with a default name format of Projectname_yyyymmdd_hh-mi-ss.dacpac.
This file contains a build of the project at the time the snapshot was taken, including all objects and scripts.
Uses (by no means a complete list)
- Save a specific version of your project to use for release
- Save this version of the project before making changes to the underlying project
- Use as a source for schema compare
- See the differences between snapshots and/or the current project through schema compare
- Baseline your project
- Roll back to this state
- Schema Compare with the snapshot as the source and the Project as the target
- Import into a new project with this as the source.
- Import into current project, but be aware that this could easily produce a lot of duplicates
