How to install database diagram support programmatically

In the previous article we discussed about how migrating a database diagram into another database. In this article I’ll quickly show you how to install database diagram support. As mentioned in the” How to copy or migrate database diagrams into another database” article, we need to install database diagram support to be able to see the migrated database diagrams. We also explained a very easy way to install database diagram support from SSMS in the “How to store a SQL Server database diagram into a file and share it with others?” article. Now, assume that we want to migrate the database diagrams into several SQL Server instances. It seems that it might be better if we can implement the whole process programmatically. This was exactly my question when I wanted to deploy several database diagrams from a database hosted in development environment into a copy of that database hosted by test or UAT (User Acceptance Test) environments. For instance, just assume that there are a bunch of database diagrams created by developers in development environment. So, you’ll have an exact copy of the database structure in test environment. Your testers need to use the database diagrams created by the developers. So far, so good. This part of the challenge is covered in the previous articles. However, we still need to install database diagram support manually and this is what we don’t like! The solution is really easy. Run the following code and you are done! You can also add the following code to the execute SQL task from your SSIS package if you decided to implement the solution in an SSIS package (take a look at “Migrating database diagram by creating a simple SSIS package” No. 8).

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