Month: July 2017

Import a bacpac to SQL Server

This is more of a note-to-self.

I sometimes have to import a bacpac file from customer’s database (usually from Azure SQL database) to my local machine – . For most of the time it’ll be very easy when the databases are in .bak format, but for .bacpac file it can be pretty complicated.

Sqlpackage.exe is the standard tool to import the .bacpac file, and it can be found with the installation of Visual Studio (for example `C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Professional\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft\SQLDB\DAC\130`) or SQL Server ( `C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\130\DAC\bin` ). Latest version should be used because they can support the older formats (.bacpac exported from older SQL Server version), but not the way around (older version might not support .bacpac files exported from newer SQL Server versions)

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Price optimizing: to be or not to be

It can be quite confusing when you first edit prices in Episerver Commerce. To your surprises, some of the prices you imported or edited might disappear, or change, without your consent! What happened?

To answer that question, it’s essential to know there are two pricing system in Commerce: IPriceService and IPriceDetailService.

They have some different characteristics, and one of them is very important: the default implementation of IPriceDetailService saves prices as-is, while the default implementation of IPriceService does not: it optimizes prices before saving. Prices which are best for customers will be favored over the “less good” ones.

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