How to add Stored Procedures to Version Control

2nd solution from @Darryl didn't work as suggested by @Moe. I modified @Darryl's template and I got it working, and thought it would be nice to share it with everybody.

IF NOT EXISTS(SELECT name FROM sysobjects
              WHERE name = '<Stored Proc Name>' AND type = 'P' AND uid = '1')   
    EXEC sp_executesql N'CREATE PROCEDURE dbo.<Stored Proc Name>
    AS
    BEGIN
        select ''Not Implemented''
    END
    '
GO

ALTER PROCEDURE dbo.<Stored Proc Name>
AS  
BEGIN
  --Stored Procedure Code 
End

This is really nice because I don't lose my stored procedure permissions.

I think it's good to have each stored procedure scripted to a separate .sql file and then just commit those files into source control. Any time a sproc is changed, update the creation script - this gives you full version history on a sproc by sproc basis.

There are SQL Server source control tools that hook into SSMS, but I think they are just scripting the db objects and committing those scripts. Red Gate looks to be due to releasing such a tool this year for example.

Background: I develop a system that has almost 2000 stored procedures.

The critical thing I have found is to treat the database as an application. You would never open an EXE with a hex editor directly and edit it. The same with a database; just because you can edit the stored procedures from the database does not mean you should.

Treat the copy of the stored procedure in source control as the current version. It is your source code. Check it out, edit it, test it, install it, and check it back in. The next time it has to be changed, follow the same procedure. Just as an application requires a build and deploy process, so should the stored procedures.

The code below is a good stored procedure template for this process. It handles both cases of an update (ALTER) or new install (CREATE).

IF EXISTS(SELECT name
            FROM sysobjects
           WHERE name = 'MyProc' AND type = 'P' AND uid = '1')
   DROP PROCEDURE dbo.MyProc
GO

CREATE PROCEDURE dbo.MyProc
AS

GO

However following sample is better in situations where you control access to the stored procedures. The DROP-CREATE method loses GRANT information.

IF NOT EXISTS(SELECT name
            FROM sysobjects
           WHERE name = 'MyProc' AND type = 'P' AND uid = '1')
   CREATE PROCEDURE dbo.MyProc
   AS
   PRINT 'No Op'
GO

ALTER PROCEDURE dbo.MyProc
AS

GO

In addition, creating a process to build the database completely from source control can help in keeping things controlled.

Create a new database from source control. Use a tool like Red Gate SQL Compare to compare the two databases and identify differences. Reconcile the differences.

A cheaper solution is to simply use the "Script As" functionality of SQL Management Studio and do a text compare. However, this method is real sensitive to the exact method SSMS uses to format the extracted SQL.

I’d definitely recommend some third party tool that integrates into SSMS. Apart from SQL Source Control mentioned above you can also try SQL Version from Apex.

Important thing is to make this really easy for developers if you want them to use it and the best way is to use tool that integrates into SSMS.