Database migrations made easy

15 Mar, 2026

EasyMigration - simple SQL Server migrations with PowerShell, I’ve had this script sitting in my toolbox for quite a while, and now it’s finally time to share it. Why didn’t I do it earlier? Probably because I didn’t have a good name for it.

In short, it executes database migration scripts in a defined order and keeps track of what has already been executed. For full documentation, check out the GitHub repository.

Let’s take a quick look.

If you already have SQL Server and SSMS installed and running, you can skip the first two steps.

Download and install SSMS and Docker
Create a new SQL Server 2025 container using this docker-compose.yml file:

 1services:
 2  mssql:
 3    image: mcr.microsoft.com/mssql/server:2025-latest
 4    container_name: mssql-dev
 5
 6    environment:
 7      ACCEPT_EULA: "Y"
 8      MSSQL_PID: "Developer"
 9      SA_PASSWORD: "P1s-Unsee-Me"
10
11    ports:
12      - "1433:1433"
13
14    mem_limit: 2g

If the SqlServer module is not installed, install it from an elevated PowerShell prompt:

1Install-Module SqlServer

Clone the easy-migration repository from my GitHub
Using SSMS, run the schema.sql script in the context of the tempdb database
Take a quick look to see how scripts are organized by phase in the migration.json file

Examples

To run the examples, open a PowerShell prompt in the example directory

Dry Run mode

 1. (Join-Path $PSScriptRoot ".." "functions.ps1")
 2
 3Invoke-EasyMigration `
 4	-ConnStr "Data Source=(local);Initial Catalog=tempdb;Connection Timeout=5;Encrypt=False;
 5		User Id=sa;Password=P1s-Unsee-Me;Application Name=easy-migration;" `
 6	-BasePath $PSScriptRoot `
 7	-Phase "phase01" `
 8	-ForceScripts "job007\000-kill-all-user-processes.sql" `
 9	-Verbose `
10	-WhatIf

Output

What if: Performing the operation "Invoke-EasyMigration" on target "DataSource: (local), InitialCatalog: tempdb, Phase: phase01".
VERBOSE: Dry run
VERBOSE: Running migration script: 000-fix-this.sql
VERBOSE: Migration completed
VERBOSE: Running migration script: 001-fix-that.sql
VERBOSE: Migration completed
VERBOSE: Forcing migration script: job007\000-kill-all-user-processes.sql
VERBOSE: Running migration script: job007\000-kill-all-user-processes.sql
VERBOSE: Migration completed
VERBOSE: Easy as that!

Execute mode

1. (Join-Path $PSScriptRoot ".." "functions.ps1")
2
3Invoke-EasyMigration `
4	-ConnStr "Data Source=(local);Initial Catalog=tempdb;Connection Timeout=5;Encrypt=False;
5		User Id=sa;Password=P1s-Unsee-Me;Application Name=easy-migration;" `
6	-BasePath $PSScriptRoot `
7	-Phase "phase01" `
8	-ForceScripts "job007\000-kill-all-user-processes.sql" `
9	-Verbose

Output

VERBOSE: Performing the operation "Invoke-EasyMigration" on target "DataSource: (local), InitialCatalog: tempdb, Phase: phase01".
VERBOSE: Running migration script: 000-fix-this.sql
VERBOSE: I'm
VERBOSE: Going
VERBOSE: To
VERBOSE: Fix
VERBOSE: This
VERBOSE: Migration completed
VERBOSE: Running migration script: 001-fix-that.sql
VERBOSE: I'm going to fix that
VERBOSE: Migration completed
VERBOSE: Forcing migration script: job007\000-kill-all-user-processes.sql
VERBOSE: Running migration script: job007\000-kill-all-user-processes.sql
VERBOSE: Just kidding
VERBOSE: Migration completed
VERBOSE: Easy as that!

Hopefully it was easy to read and will be easy to use.

See you later!

#Powershell