Avoid schema mismatch in System-Versioned tables

Question

Looking for a workaround for:

Error: SQL71609: System-versioned current and history tables do not have matching schemes. Mismatched column: 'XXXX'.

When trying to use SQL 2016 System-Versioned (Temporal) tables in SSDT for Visual Studio 2015.

I've defined a basic table:

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Example] (
    [ExampleId] INT NOT NULL IDENTITY(1,1) PRIMARY KEY,
    [ExampleColumn] VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL,
    [SysStartTime] datetime2 GENERATED ALWAYS AS ROW START HIDDEN NOT NULL,
    [SysEndTime] datetime2 GENERATED ALWAYS AS ROW END HIDDEN NOT NULL,
    PERIOD FOR SYSTEM_TIME (SysStartTime,SysEndTime)
)
WITH (SYSTEM_VERSIONING=ON(HISTORY_TABLE=[history].[Example]))
GO

(Assuming the [history] schema is properly created in SSDT). This builds fine the first time.

If I later make a change:

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Example] (
    [ExampleId] INT NOT NULL IDENTITY(1,1) PRIMARY KEY,
    [ExampleColumn] CHAR(50) NOT NULL, -- NOTE: Changed datatype
    [SysStartTime] datetime2 GENERATED ALWAYS AS ROW START HIDDEN NOT NULL,
    [SysEndTime] datetime2 GENERATED ALWAYS AS ROW END HIDDEN NOT NULL,
    PERIOD FOR SYSTEM_TIME (SysStartTime,SysEndTime)
)
WITH (SYSTEM_VERSIONING=ON(HISTORY_TABLE=[history].[Example]))
GO

Then the build fails with the error message above. Any change to the data type, length, precision, or scale will result in this error. (Including changing from VARCHAR to CHAR and VARCHAR(50) to VARCHAR(51); changing NOT NULL to NULL does not produce the error.) Doing a Clean does not fix things.

My current workaround is to make sure I have the latest version checked in to source control, then open the SQL Server Object Explorer, expand the Projects - XXXX folder and navigate to the affected table, then delete it. Then I have to restore the code (which SSDT deletes) from source control. This procedure is tedious, dangerous, and not what I want to be doing.

Has anyone found a way to fix this? Is it a bug?

I'm using Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2015, Version 14.0.25431.01 Update 3 with SQL Server Data Tools 14.0.61021.0.

Answer 1

I can reproduce this problem. We (the SQL Server tools team) will work to get this fixed in a future version of SSDT. In the meantime, I believe you can work around this by explicitly defining the history table (i.e. add the history table with its desired schema to the project), and then manually keep the schema of the current and history table in sync.

If you encounter problems with explicitly defining the history table, try closing Visual Studio, deleting the DBMDL file in the project root, and then re-opening the project.