Today I was thrilled to hear about the new tool which was released by Microsoft yesterday(3rd Jan 2012).The code name for the tool is “SQL Azure Compatibility Assessment Tool” and this is the right tool to test compatibility if you are planning to move your databases to SQL Azure.

All the details of the release if available under

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/6246.aspx

I decided to test this wonderful tool which will in a matter of minutes will help me to understand any compatibility issues if I move my databases to the cloud(SQL Azure).

For the test to be successful you will need a LIVE ID and a .dacpac

I already had a live ID which I am using since many years and I decided to go ahead with the process of creating a .dacpac

How do I prepare a .dacpac – 

1. You will need to download and install SQL Server Data Tools to proceed and create a .dacpac

SQL Server Data Tools needs to have Visual Studio 2010 with SP1,and as I already had them installed on my test server,the tool got installed correctly.

2. Opened SQL Server Data Tools GUI to Create a Database Project and Imported a database which I had already backed up from SQL Server 2005 and restored to SQL Server 2012 RC 0.

The Next setup was to proceed and build this.

After the build was completed a .dacpac was created.It was available under

\\Path\Visual Studio 2010\Projects\Database2\bin\Debug

Assessment after .dacpac creation

I went ahead and accessed the portal https://assess.sql.azure.com .Logged in with my live ID and choose New Assessment

This gave me an option to upload the .dacpac which was created earlier.As soon as I uploaded the file,I got Assessment In Progress screen

I went ahead and did a refresh to see if the assessment has completed and found that its done and report is ready

The view button gave me this report which had 2 sections Not Supported and Need to fix

My test database had 2 Not supported explanations and it can be found here –