How to restore bacpac file in SQL server for Sitecore?

Do you know how to restore a bacpac file in SQL Server? You may wonder why you ever need to do it. Well, if you are working in Sitecore, then there are high chances at some point of time in your career, you may be asked to take backup of Sitecore databases in a higher environment and then restore them in lower environment. Recently, a friend of mine was trying to do the same. He was trying to use restore database option as in snapshot below but it did not work out as expected -

It turned out that Restore Database method is used for restoring .bak files but the backup files he had were bacpac files which have a slightly different restore process. So, I thought other fellow sitecorians may also face similar issue. Why not share it with the community as well.

Bacpac vs Bak file

Lets first understand what is the difference between bacpac and bak file. Why there are 2 different types if we are trying to achieve the same goal to restore database?

Bacpac is a dacpac file but with data included, bak is a database backup. One is used for defining how a new database is built, so if you were building it out with sql projects in a tool like visual studio or wanting to use DevOps patterns for CICD; you’ll want dacpac/bacpac.

If you’re doing a migration to a new server and you’re using tools like ssms then no need to muddy the water, keep the way you’ve always done it. Database backup and restore is perfectly fine and preferable in most cases. You can always onboard to dacpac/bacpac later if you want to use devops.

How to restore a bacpac file?

Within SSMS, right click on Databases and click on Import Data Tier Application-

Next, an Introduction dialog will open. Click Next.

Next, on Import Settings screen, if your bacpac is on local disk, select Import From Local Disk>Browser your bacpac file and Select it. Click Next

In the Database Settings screen that opens next, verify your settings and click Next.

Verify your details in Summary section and click Finish.

Wait for the restore to finish.

Once restore finishes, you are all set to update your Sitecore instance's connectionstring to point to restore databases and use it.

Hope it helps you!!

Comments

Sitecore PowerShell Script to create all language versions for an item from en version

We have lots of media items and our business wants to copy the data from en version of media item to all other language versions defined in System/Languages. This ensures that media is available in all the languages. So, we created the below powershell script to achieve the same - #Get all language versions defined in System/Languages $languages = Get-ChildItem /sitecore/System/Languages -recurse | Select $_.name | Where-Object {$_.name -ne "en"} | Select Name #Ensuring correct items are updated by comparing the template ID $items = Get-ChildItem -Path "/sitecore/media library/MyProjects" -Recurse | Where-Object {'<media item template id>' -contains $_.TemplateID} #Bulk update context to improve performance New-UsingBlock (New-Object Sitecore.Data.BulkUpdateContext) { foreach($item in $items){ foreach($language in $languages){ $languageVersion = Get-Item -Path $item.Paths.Path -Language $language.Name #Check if language versi...

Export Sitecore media library files to zip using SPE

If you ever require to export Sitecore media files to zip (may be to optimize them), SPE (Sitecore Powershell Extension) has probably the easiest way to do this for you. It's as easy as the below 3 steps - 1. Right click on your folder (icons folder in snap)>Click on Scripts> Click on Download 2. SPE will start zipping all the media files placed within this folder. 3. Once zipping is done, you will see the Download option in the next screen. Click Download Zip containing the media files within is available on your local machine. You can play around with the images now. Hope this helps!! Like and Share ;)

Make Sitecore instance faster using Roslyn Compiler

When we install the Sitecore instance on local, the first load is slow. After each code deploy also, it takes a while for the Sitecore instance to load and experience editor to come up. For us, the load time for Sitecore instance on local machines was around 4 minutes. We started looking for ways to minimize it and found that if we update our Web.config to use Roslyn compiler and include the relevant Nugets into the project, our load times will improve. We followed the simple steps - Go to the Project you wish to add the NuGet package and right click the project and click 'Manage NuGet Packages'. Make sure your 'Package Source' is set to nuget.org and go to the 'Browse' Tab and search Microsoft.CodeDom.Providers.DotNetCompilerPlatform. Install whichever version you desire, make sure you note which version you installed. You can learn more about it here . After installation, deploy your project, make sure the Microsoft.CodeDom.Providers.DotNetCompilerPlatform.d...

Experience of a first time Sitecore MVP

The Journey I have been working in Sitecore for almost 10 years now. When I was a beginner in Sitecore, I was highly impressed by the incredible community support. In fact, my initial Sitecore learning path was entirely based on community written blogs on Sitecore. During a discussion with my then technology lead Neeraj Gulia , he proposed the idea that I should start giving back to developer community whenever I get chance. Just like I have been helped by many developers via online blogs, stackoverflow etc., I should also try to help others. Fast forward a few years and I met Nehemiah Jeyakumar (now an MVP). He had a big archive of his technical notes in the form Sitecore blogs. I realized my first blog dont have to be perfect and it can be as simple as notes to a specific problem for reference in future. That's when I probably created my first blog post on Sitecore. At that time, I didn't knew about the Sitecore MVP program. Over the years, I gained more confidence to writ...

Clean Coding Principles in CSharp

A code shall be easy to read and understand. In this post, I am outlining basic principles about clean coding after researching through expert recommended books, trainings and based on my experience. A common example to start with is a variable declaration like - int i The above statement did not clarify the purpose of variable i. However, the same variable can be declared as - int pageNumber The moment we declared the variable as int pageNumber, our brain realized that the variable is going to store the value for number of pages. We have set the context in our brain now and it is ready to understand what the code is going to do next with these page numbers. This is one of the basic advantages of clean coding. Reasons for clean coding - • Reading clean code is easier - Every code is revisited after certain amount of time either by the same or different developer who created it. In both the cases, if the code is unclean, its difficult to understand and u...

Sitecore Docs - Tech Tips by GS

Search This Blog