Visual Studio 2013 SQL Schema Compare: Ignore Column Order

Question

In Visual Studio 2013, is there a way to ignore column ordering when doing a Schema Compare? I see that this feature was removed from Visual Studio 2012 (according to this: https://mcmap.net/q/668165/-visual-studio-2012-schema-compare-column-order-and-constraint-names), but I'm hoping it was brought back in version 2013.

Here's a quick visual to illustrate what I'd like to ignore:

Battement

Answer 1

As described on this blog post, Ignore column order is now an option in SSDT version 17.0, which is compatible with Visual Studio 2015.

If you’ve ever had to deal with accidental data motion when putting a column in the middle of a table definition, you’ll know how hard this can be to spot and manage. In this release you can now check the “Ignore Column Order” option in the Advanced Publish Options. This will append new columns to the end of an existing table rather than altering the table structure to add the column in its listed position.

You can find the setting by going into the Advanced... button section of your publish profile, as well as in the Advanced... button section of the database project properties' Debug tab.

You can also achieve the same effect by adding the following element to your publish.xml file:

<IgnoreColumnOrder>True</IgnoreColumnOrder>

Unfortunately I do not know of a way to have this work in Visual Studio 2013, but hopefully you have upgraded to a newer version of Visual Studio by now :)

Glutamate

Answer 2

Ignore column order is now available in VS2015.

Additionally, for relational and Azure SQL databases SSDT 17.0 GA includes a highly requested improvement to ignore column order in upgrade plans as well as numerous other bug fixes. 

See: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ssdt/2017/04/19/announcing-the-general-availability-ga-release-of-ssdt-17-0-april-2017/

Gurgitation

Answer 3

The 'Ignore column order' setting is not available in visual studio 2013. There are Tentive to reintroduce this option in the future.

Sources: Microsoft

Wyly

Has this feature been reintroduced yet? – Garmon

I do not believe it has been added yet. Microsoft's main objective is probably still on making Windows 10 more user-friendly. – Wyly

If anyone's looking for updates on this, try this link which has a couple of replies from Microsoft employees. – Startle

There's also a user voice issue about this. – Startle

This option is not available you can vote for it here connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/Feedback/Details/1221587 – Earing

For any poor souls who end up here from Google like me, the above link has good news: "This feature has been completed and checked-in. It's currently planned to ship in the March release of SSDT. Saturday, February 18, 2017 1:18 AM" – Fidelia

Answer 4

This feature is also available in Azure Data studio -> Schema Compare -> Ignore Column Order.

Joo