Assembly – Dave + SQL Server = Ingenious SQL….

JSON to DataSet SQL CLR

I have been working with SQL CLR functions and procedure recently, and have come up with a crazy solution involving JSON, Analysis Services, and Visual Studio Database projects. Before we get into the crazy solution, we are going to take another step into SQL CLR Procedures which will help with understanding the pain points with using an external library. In a previous post we looked at creating JSON objects and in another post creating SQL CLR functions and procedures. In this blog post we are going to deserialize a JSON object and return the data as dataset to the results window.

The idea behind this blog post is to pass a JSON object to a SQL CLR procedure, deserialize the JSON object into a .Net object, load the .Net object into dataset, and return to dataset to the client. Now before you start thinking, “with SQL2016 we have JSON support, why do we need this?” One, an important part of this blog post is to show how to include external libraries into a CLR and how to allow SQL Server to use them. Two, we will need JSON in the crazy solution later, so showing how to work with JSON in .NET will help in the next blog post. Three, it will make for an “interesting” blog post and I could not think of anything better.

Data Setup

Here is the sample JSON object that we will pass to the SQL CLR procedure, which happens to be the grades from a student in a previous JSON blog post.

{
  "Grades": [
    {
      "CourseCode": "ICS140",
      "CourseName": "Introduction to Programming",
      "Grade": "A"
    },
    {
      "CourseCode": "ICS225",
      "CourseName": "Web Programming",
      "Grade": "B+"
    },
    {
      "CourseCode": "ICS240",
      "CourseName": "Advanced Programming",
      "Grade": "B-"
    },
    {
      "CourseCode": "ICS310",
      "CourseName": "Database Management",
      "Grade": "B"
    }
  ]
}

What we expect to return is a data set that looks like the following table.

CourseCode	CourseName	Grade
ICS140	Introduction to Programming	A
ICS225	Web Programming	B+
ICS240	Advanced Programming	B-
ICS310	Database Management	B

CLR Object List

JsonToDataSet will accept a JSON object in the form of a NVARCHAR(MAX) column and will return a full dataset where the grade array will be converted into the dataset. The element names will become the column headers in the dataset.

Project Setup

Even though we are going to deploy this SQL CLR procedure to the same database, we are going to create a new project called JsonSQLCLR, and we will follow the same process as we did for our FirstSQLCLR project. From the Visual Studio start page, click on the “Create a new Project”, from the new project page, find and click on the “SQL Server Database Project”, and click “Next”. In the “Configure your new project” we are going to add JsonSQLCLR for the project name and select our path again.

Once Visual Studio finishes configuring the SQL Server Database Project type, right click on the “JsonSQLCLR” project and select the “Add” option, then the “New Item…” option. In the Add New Item window we will select the “SQL CLR C#” option in the left options list. In the center window we will select the “SQL CLR C# Stored Procedure” option, and name it “JsonToDataSet.cs”.

JsonToDataSet

In the JsonToDataSet method we will add code to send data back to the client using a SQLPipe object, and code to allow the JSON object to be passed into the procedure as a SqlString parameter.

using System;
using System.Data;
using System.Data.SqlClient;
using System.Data.SqlTypes;
using Microsoft.SqlServer.Server;
 
public partial class StoredProcedures
{ 
  public static void JsonToDataSet(SqlString studentGrades)
  {
    SqlPipe sqlPipe = SqlContext.Pipe; 
  }
}

Now that we have the JSON object as a string in the method, we need to deserialize and put it into a .NET object that we can access and work with. Before we can deserialize the JSON object we need to define a class that we can use to reference and populate data into. We could write our own class, however when there are free tools available to do the work, we will use the free tools. BTW, I like free tools. This Json Utils site will generate C#.NET classes for us by passing in our JSON string. The output will look like the following, which we will add below our StoredProcedures class. At a high level, the following structures state we can have a student with a list of grades, and each grade can have a Corse Code, Course Name and Grade.

public class Grades
{
    public string CourseCode { get; set; }
    public string CourseName { get; set; }
    public string Grade { get; set; }
}
 
public class Student
{
    public IList<Grades> grades { get; set; }
}

The Student class implementation is using an IList type, which will cause the build to fail, because the project does not currently understand what an IList type is. The library for an IList type is found in the System  Collections  Generic library, so we will need to import the library. Add the following line near the top of the coding file, you will see other using statements there as well.

public class Gradesusing System.Collections.Generic;

After the line is added we should be able to compile the project.

Now that we have the Student and Grades classes implemented, we will need to desearlize the JSON object, in a SQL Server Database Project we do not have libraries loaded by default for working with JSON objects, so we will need to import a JSON library. There are a few libraries that can do this, however, some are not available to SQL Server project types. The ideal library is System.Text.Json which is available through NuGet, but currently it is not an option for SQL Server database projects or integration services projects. Instead, we are going to use Json.NET from Newtonsoft, which is also a great utility for working with JSON in C#.NET. We can download the libraries from https://www.newtonsoft.com/json. Add the Newtonsoft.Json.dll to a location that is accessible to your project and the SQL Server instance.

To add the JSON libraries into our project we will right click on “References” and select “Add References…” In the Add Reference window we will select Browse and navigate to the location where you stored Newtonsoft.Json.dll.

After we have added a reference to the library in the project we need to import the Newtonsoft.Json library in our code. Add the following line near the top of the coding file, you will see other using statements there as well.

using Newtonsoft.Json;

Now we are ready to deserialize the JSON object. Within the Newtonsoft.JSON library, we are going to use a generic method called DeserializeOjbect to convert the JSON object into a Student object

JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<ClassType>([Json Object]);

The DeserializeObject method accepts a Student class in the method call and uses the JSON object passed in as a parameter to create a student object. At a high level the Student class gives a mapping to the DeserializeObject method, and the DeserializeObject method will try to populate as much as it can based on that mapping. If the JSON object passed in does not match, the mapping no data will be mapped and you will be left with an empty Student object. Here is the full call which will instantiate the student object and allow us to start working with it.

Student student = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Student>(studentGrades.ToString());

Now we have our JSON object deserialized, we can define out output. In our previous post we create a metadata object to store our formatted date. This worked for a single output, however this time we need to output three columns. So we will need to define a list of metadata objects. We will accomplish this by creating a generic list of type SqlMetaData. We will also use a short cut syntax for creating the SqlMetaData objects. Instead of creating variables and separate objects like this:

SqlMetaData courseCodeMetatData = new SqlMetaData("CourseCode", SqlDbType.NVarChar, 20)
sqlMetaData.Add(sqlMetaData);

We are going to use a shortcut syntax by skipping the variable creation and creating the objects directly in the sqlMetaData list. The full syntax will look like this:

List<SqlMetaData> sqlMetaData = new List<SqlMetaData>();
 
sqlMetaData.Add(new SqlMetaData("CourseCode", SqlDbType.NVarChar, 20));
sqlMetaData.Add(new SqlMetaData("CourseName", SqlDbType.NVarChar, 250));
sqlMetaData.Add(new SqlMetaData("Grade", SqlDbType.NVarChar, 5));
 
SqlDataRecord sqlDataRecord = new SqlDataRecord(sqlMetaData.ToArray());

Now we are ready to start sending data back to the client. Before we can start sending data we need to mark the beginning of the dataset that we are going to start sending to the client. To do this we will call the SendResultsStart method, this method will mark the beginning of the dataset sending process.

sqlPipe.SendResultsStart(sqlDataRecord);

Now that the pipe has been opened to the client we send data from the Student class back to the client. We will accomplish this by traversing the student object with a foreach loop, capturing and adding to the SQL Data Record list, and finally send each record back to the client.

foreach (Grades grade in student.grades)
{
    sqlDataRecord.SetString(0, grade.CourseCode);
    sqlDataRecord.SetString(1, grade.CourseName);
    sqlDataRecord.SetString(2, grade.Grade);
    sqlPipe.SendResultsRow(sqlDataRecord);
}

All that is left is to mark the end of the dataset in the SQL Pipe.

sqlPipe.SendResultsEnd();

Full Code

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Data;
using System.Data.SqlClient;
using System.Data.SqlTypes;
using Microsoft.SqlServer.Server;
using Newtonsoft.Json;
public partial class StoredProcedures
{
    [Microsoft.SqlServer.Server.SqlProcedure]
    public static void JsonToDataSet(SqlString studentGrades)
    {
        SqlPipe sqlPipe = SqlContext.Pipe;
 
        Student student = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Student>(studentGrades.ToString());
 
        List<SqlMetaData> sqlMetaData = new List<SqlMetaData>();
 
        sqlMetaData.Add(new SqlMetaData("CourseCode", SqlDbType.NVarChar, 20));
        sqlMetaData.Add(new SqlMetaData("CourseName", SqlDbType.NVarChar, 250));
        sqlMetaData.Add(new SqlMetaData("Grade", SqlDbType.NVarChar, 5));
 
        SqlDataRecord sqlDataRecord = new SqlDataRecord(sqlMetaData.ToArray());
 
        sqlPipe.SendResultsStart(sqlDataRecord);
        foreach (Grades grade in student.grades)
        {
            sqlDataRecord.SetString(0, grade.CourseCode);
            sqlDataRecord.SetString(1, grade.CourseName);
            sqlDataRecord.SetString(2, grade.Grade);
            sqlPipe.SendResultsRow(sqlDataRecord);
        }
        sqlPipe.SendResultsEnd();
    }
}
 
public class Grades
{
    public string CourseCode { get; set; }
    public string CourseName { get; set; }
    public string Grade { get; set; }
}
 
public class Student
{
    public IList<Grades> grades { get; set; }
}

SQL CLR Security

Before we deploy the JSON SQL CLR procedure we need to implement the same security features with an asymmetric key to allow the SQL CLR procedure to execute in the database. Here are the steps for creating an asymmetric key, signing the CLR project, and creating a login that binds the asymmetric key and allows the CLR objects to execute. More details from the previous post can be found here.

Create an asymmetric key using the strong name utility command line tool installed with Visual Studio 2019.
Create an ASYMMETRIC KEY in SQL Server
Create a SQL Login based on the ASYMMETRIC KEY
Grant Permissions to Assemblies using the SQL Login
Sign the SQL CLR Project with the asymmetric key

Deploy the CLR Objects

After the solution successfully compiles, the security has been configured both on the Database Project and SQL Instance, we are ready to deploy the solution to the SQL Server. To deploy the SQL CLR objects we will right click on the “JsonSQLCLR” project and select “Publish…” We are going to deploy to the same database as we did in the FirstSQLCLR blog post. We are doing this for two reasons, first to show that we can and second, we are being lazy and not creating another database.

With any luck the deployment should have failed, which means that the assemblies and permissions have not been deployed and the database environment is not set to have Trustworthy=On. We should see an error like below. We will need to click on the “View Results” link to see the error message.

As the error message states, we are seeing this error message because to the Newtsonsoft.Json library is not found in the database. So we will need to add the Newtsonsoft.Json library to the FirstSQLCLR database. We have a few options to add the library into the database. We can add the assembly as a trusted assembly in SQL server, we can create logins for the assemblies, or we can create certificates for the assemblies. Here are the sql scripts for each option.

Using Trusted assemblies

USE FirstSQLCLR
GO
 
DECLARE @clrName NVARCHAR(4000) = N'Newtonsoft.Json'
DECLARE @clrBin VARBINARY(max) = 0x4D5A90000300000004000000FFFF0 – this is simplified for the blog post, this string is usually very large
DECLARE @hash VARBINARY(64)
SET @hash = hashbytes('SHA2_512', @clrBin);
 
EXEC sys.sp__trusted_assembly @hash, @clrName;
 
-- Now that we have a trusted the assembly we can add it into the database.
CREATE ASSEMBLY [JsonSQLCLR]
    AUTHORIZATION [dbo]
    FROM 0x4D5A90000300000004000000FFFF0; – this is simplified for the blog post, this string is usually very large

Using Asymmetric Keys

USE master
GO
 
CREATE ASYMMETRIC KEY NewtonsoftJsonKey
FROM EXECUTABLE FILE = 'C:\Development\SQLCLR\Newtonsoft.Json.dll';
 
CREATE LOGIN NewtonsoftJsonLogin FROM ASYMMETRIC KEY NewtonsoftJsonKey;
 
GRANT UNSAFE ASSEMBLY TO NewtonsoftJsonLogin;
 
--Now that we have a login that has permissions to the assembly we can add it into the database.
USE FirstSQLCLR
GO
 
CREATE ASSEMBLY [Newtonsoft.Json]
FROM 'C:\Development\SQLCLR\Newtonsoft.Json.dll'
WITH PERMISSION_SET = UNSAFE

Using Certificates

USE master
GO
 
CREATE CERTIFICATE NewtonsoftCert
FROM EXECUTABLE FILE = 'C:\Development\SQLCLR\Newtonsoft.Json.dll';
GO
 
CREATE LOGIN NewtonsoftJsonLogin 
FROM CERTIFICATE NewtonsoftJsonCert;
GO
 
GRANT UNSAFE ASSEMBLY TO NewtonsoftJsonLogin;
GO
 
--Now that we have a login that has permissions to the assembly we can add it into the database.
USE FirstSQLCLR
GO
 
CREATE ASSEMBLY [Newtonsoft.Json]
FROM 'C:\Development\SQLCLR\Newtonsoft.Json.dll'
WITH PERMISSION_SET = UNSAFE

In this blog post we are going to use option three the certificates. We will start out by creating the certificate in the master database using the following script. Being that we have placed the Newtonsoft.Json.dll in the proper directory these statements should execute successfully.

USE master
GO
 
-- CERTIFICATE [Newtonsoft.Json]
CREATE CERTIFICATE NewtonsoftCert
FROM EXECUTABLE FILE = 'C:\Development\SQLCLR\Newtonsoft.Json.dll';
GO
 
CREATE LOGIN NewtonsoftJsonLogin 
FROM CERTIFICATE NewtonsoftJsonCert;
GO
 
GRANT UNSAFE ASSEMBLY TO NewtonsoftJsonLogin;
GO

Now we are going to try adding the missing Newtonsoft.Json assembly into the database using the following script.

USE FirstSQLCLR
GO
 
CREATE ASSEMBLY [Newtonsoft.Json]
FROM 'C:\Development\SQLCLR\Newtonsoft.Json.dll'
WITH PERMISSION_SET = UNSAFE

Notice that now we got an error in SQL Server Management Studio? As the error states, we are missing another assembly. The reason here is that the Newtonsoft.Json assembly has a dependency on other assemblies. If the assembly that you are importing has multiple references you may have to import all of the other dependent references. This can be a tedious repetitive task, however, for this Json SQL CLR project here are the certificate, login, and assembly create statements. You may need to adjust the paths to the dll’s depending on the version Visual Studio and .Net installed.

USE Master
GO
-- CERTIFICATE MicrosoftNetCert
CREATE CERTIFICATE MicrosoftNetCert
FROM EXECUTABLE FILE = 'C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\assembly\GAC_MSIL\System.Runtime.Serialization\v4.0_4.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089\System.Runtime.Serialization.dll'
GO
 
CREATE LOGIN MicrosoftNetLogin 
FROM CERTIFICATE MicrosoftNetCert
GO
 
GRANT UNSAFE ASSEMBLY TO MicrosoftNetLogin
GO
 
-- CERTIFICATE [Newtonsoft.Json]
CREATE CERTIFICATE NewtonsoftCert
FROM EXECUTABLE FILE = 'C:\Development\SQLCLR\Newtonsoft.Json.dll';
GO
 
CREATE LOGIN NewtonsoftLogin 
FROM CERTIFICATE NewtonsoftCert;
GO
 
GRANT UNSAFE ASSEMBLY TO NewtonsoftLogin;
GO
 
 
USE FirstSQLCLR
GO
-- ASSEMBLY [System.ServiceModel.Internals]
CREATE ASSEMBLY [System.ServiceModel.Internals]
FROM 'C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\assembly\GAC_MSIL\System.ServiceModel.Internals\v4.0_4.0.0.0__31bf3856ad364e35\System.ServiceModel.Internals.dll'
WITH PERMISSION_SET = UNSAFE
GO
 
--ASSEMBLY [SMDiagnostics]
CREATE ASSEMBLY [SMDiagnostics]
FROM 'C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\assembly\GAC_MSIL\SMDiagnostics\v4.0_4.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089\SMDiagnostics.dll'
WITH PERMISSION_SET = UNSAFE
GO
 
-- ASSEMBLY [System.Runtime.Serialization]
CREATE ASSEMBLY [System.Runtime.Serialization]
FROM 'C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\assembly\GAC_MSIL\System.Runtime.Serialization\v4.0_4.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089\System.Runtime.Serialization.dll'
WITH PERMISSION_SET = UNSAFE
GO
 
-- ASSEMBLY [Newtonsoft.Json]
CREATE ASSEMBLY [Newtonsoft.Json]
FROM 'C:\Development\SQLCLR\Newtonsoft.Json.dll'
WITH PERMISSION_SET = UNSAFE;
GO

After executing scripts, providing everything was successful, you should see the assemblies in the FirstSQLCLR database under the Programmability –> Assemblies folder. Now that we have the assemblies created we can try to deploy our JSON SQL CLR procedure to the FirstSQLCLR database again.

Execute the JSON CLR Procedure

Now that we have successfully deployed the JSON SQL CLR procedure, we can try to execute it. We will need to create a variable to store the JSON object, and pass that to the procedure. We can execute the SQL CLR procedure with the following SQL Code. If everything goes well, we should see a result set with course and grade information populated based on the JSON object that was passed in.

USE [FirstSQLCLR]
GO
 
DECLARE @studentGrades nvarchar(max) = '{
  "Grades": [
    {
      "CourseCode": "ICS140",
      "CourseName": "Introduction to Programming",
      "Grade": "A"
    },
    {
      "CourseCode": "ICS225",
      "CourseName": "Web Programming",
      "Grade": "B+"
    },
    {
      "CourseCode": "ICS240",
      "CourseName": "Advanced Programming",
      "Grade": "B-"
    },
    {
      "CourseCode": "ICS310",
      "CourseName": "Database Management",
      "Grade": "B"
    }
  ]
}'
 
EXECUTE [dbo].[JsonToDataSet]  @studentGrades
GO

Summary

This was step two “partial craziness” for creating SQL CLR procedures in Visual Studio database projects. This post was focused more on importing libraries and assemblies into SQL Server than working with JSON. However, it also showed how we can build a bigger and more dynamic result set that can be returned from the CLR to the client. We have looked at a “slightly” more complex version of a CLR. Previously we looked at simple CLR objects and the intricacies of security and deployment. Now we are ready to look at the real craziness that I get myself into.

Simple SQL CLR Objects

I have been working with SQL CLR functions and procedures recently, and have come up with a crazy solution involving JSON, Analysis Services, and Visual Studio Database Projects. However, Before we get into the crazy solutions, we are going to take a look at a simple SQL CLR implementation. This simple implementation will include procedures and functions that return formatted dates. Using a simple solution will help with the intricacies of Visual Studio projects, CLR security, project deployment, and CLR execution. In this blog post we will take a look at creating SQL CLR functions in Visual Studio 2019. We will return data as a message as well as a dataset to the results window. We will implement proper SQL CLR security with asymmetric keys and signed assemblies.

The idea behind this blog post is to enhance the current CONVERT function that accepts formats for dates. There are plenty of predefined formats, however this SQL CLR function will allow you to build any date format that C#.net allows, here is a reference for building custom date formats. We will build three different SQL CLR objects, two procedure and one function.

CLR Object List

DateFormatMessage will accept a timestamp and a format, and will return the formatted date to the Message window.

DateFormatResult will accept a timestamp and a format, and will return the formatted date to the Result window.

DateFormatFunction will accept a timestamp and a format, and will return the formatted date as a result from a function call within a query call.

Project Setup

We will create our SQL CLR objects by creating a database project within Visual Studio 2019. After opening Visual Studio 2019 we will select the “Create a new Project” option

In the “Create new project” window we will select the “SQL Server Database Project” type. We can either scroll through all of the project types or you can do a key word search for the type.

In the “Configure your new project” window we are going to name our project “FirstSQLCLR”, specify the location where our source code will be stored on disk, and leave the solution name the same as the project.

Once Visual Studio finishes configuring the SQL Server Database Project type, we will have an empty database project. There are a couple ways to add the SQL CLR object to the project, we are going to use the Solution Explorer route. In the Solution Explorer windows we will right click on the “FirstSQLCLR” project and select the “Add” option, then the “New Item…” option.

In the Add New Item window we will select the “SQL CLR C#” option in the left options list. In the center window we will select the “SQL CLR C# Stored Procedure” option, and name it “DateForamtMessage.cs”.

In the DateFormatMessage.cs code window we will have an empty C# method body similar to the following code snippet.

using System;
using System.Data;
using System.Data.SqlClient;
using System.Data.SqlTypes;
using Microsoft.SqlServer.Server;
 
public partial class StoredProcedures
{
    [Microsoft.SqlServer.Server.SqlProcedure]
    public static void DateFormatMessage ()
    {
        // Put your code here
    }
}

DateFormatMessage

In the DateFormatMessage method we will add code to send data back to the caller using a SQLPipe object, and code to format the passed in date with the passed in format. One thing to note here is that we are passing a string value back to the SqlPipe object, which will be returned to the message window in management studio.

Here is the completed code.

using System;
using System.Data;
using System.Data.SqlClient;
using System.Data.SqlTypes;
using Microsoft.SqlServer.Server;
 
public partial class StoredProcedures
{
    [Microsoft.SqlServer.Server.SqlProcedure]
    public static void DateFormatMessage(SqlDateTime sqlDateTime, SqlString CSharpDateFormat)
    {
        SqlPipe sqlPipe = SqlContext.Pipe;
        DateTime dateTime = (DateTime)sqlDateTime;
 
        // Apply the date format to the ToString() function
        string formattedDate = dateTime.ToString(CSharpDateFormat.ToString());
 
        // send the results back
        sqlPipe.Send(formattedDate);
    }
}

DateFormatResult

We will repeat the previous steps for the DateFormatResult.cs SQL CLR procedure, however the code will be slightly modified from the message version. The additional code will allow us to return a record set instead of a single string. The following lines will define a record set object and populate the single value in the object.

// using a meta data object, setup the resultset configuration
SqlMetaData sqlMetaData = new SqlMetaData("formattedDate", SqlDbType.NVarChar, 25);
SqlDataRecord sqlDataRecord = new SqlDataRecord(sqlMetaData);
 
// store the data into the dataset
sqlDataRecord.SetString(0, formattedDate);

Here is the completed code.

using System;
using System.Data;
using System.Data.SqlClient;
using System.Data.SqlTypes;
using Microsoft.SqlServer.Server;
 
public partial class StoredProcedures
{
    [Microsoft.SqlServer.Server.SqlProcedure]
    public static void DateFormatResult(SqlDateTime sqlDateTime, SqlString CSharpDateFormat)
    {
        SqlPipe sqlPipe = SqlContext.Pipe; 
        DateTime dateTime = (DateTime)sqlDateTime;
 
        // Apply the date format to the ToString() function
        string formattedDate = dateTime.ToString(CSharpDateFormat.ToString());
 
        // using a meta data object, setup the resultset configuration
        SqlMetaData sqlMetaData = new SqlMetaData("formattedDate", SqlDbType.NVarChar, 25);
        SqlDataRecord sqlDataRecord = new SqlDataRecord(sqlMetaData);
 
        // store the data into the dataset
        sqlDataRecord.SetString(0, formattedDate);
 
        // send the results back
        sqlPipe.Send(sqlDataRecord);
    }
}

DateFormatFunction

To add the DateFormatFunction we will repeat most of the same steps, however we will need to choose a “SQL CLR C# User Defined Function” instead of the “SQL CLR C# Stored Procedure” option in the Add New Item window.

The code for a user defined function is simplified, as we will not need a SqlPipe to return the results. We are also only returning a single string value, so we will not need the record set object either. Being we are returning a single value from the function, we only need to return the formatted string.

Here is the completed code.

using System.Data.SqlClient;
using System.Data.SqlTypes;
using Microsoft.SqlServer.Server;
 
public partial class UserDefinedFunctions
{
    [Microsoft.SqlServer.Server.SqlFunction]
    public static SqlString DateFormatFunction(SqlDateTime sqlDateTime, SqlString CSharpDateFormat)
    {
        DateTime dateTime = (DateTime)sqlDateTime;
 
        // Apply the date format to the ToString() function
        string formattedDate = dateTime.ToString(CSharpDateFormat.ToString());
 
        // return the formatted string 
        return new SqlString(formattedDate);
    }
}

We are ready to try to compile our code. Again there are multiple ways to compile our code, we will use the Solution Explorer route. In the Solution Explorer windows we will right click on the “FirstSQLCLR” project and select the “Rebuild” option.

Providing everything was typed in correctly and we have no build errors we should see that the build succeeded in the output window.

SQL CLR Security

Before we deploy the SQL CLR objects we need to implement the security features needed to allow custom code to run within SQL Server. There are a couple ways to do this, however, we are only going to focus on a secure option implementing asymmetric keys. We will not set the database’s TRUSTWORTHY option on ON, nor will we update the CLR Strict Security option. Here are the steps for creating an asymmetric key, signing the CLR project, and creating a login that binds the asymmetric key and allows the CLR objects to execute.

Create an asymmetric key using the strong name utility command line tool installed with Visual Studio 2019.
Create an ASYMMETRIC KEY in SQL Server
Create a SQL Login based on the ASYMMETRIC KEY
Grant Permissions to Assemblies using the SQL Login
Sign the SQL CLR Project with the asymmetric key

Step 1: Create the Asymmetric Key

Sn.exe is a free utility shipped with Visual Studio that will create asymmetric key. We will need to open the command window with Administrator privileges to generate the key. We will run this command with just the –k switch and a path to store the key.

Step 2: Create an ASYMMETRIC KEY in SQL Server

In the master database we need to create the asymmetric key from the file that was generated in Step 1. If you have not already created a master key for your SQL instance you will need to do that in this step.

USE MASTER
GO
 
-- Create the Master  Key for the SQL Instance
CREATE MASTER KEY ENCRYPTION BY PASSWORD = '[Some Really Strong Password]';
 
-- Create the asymmetric key from the strong named key used to sign the CLR project
CREATE ASYMMETRIC KEY FirstSQLCLR FROM FILE = 'C:\Development\SQLCLR\FirstSQLCLR\FirstSQLCLR.snk'

Step 3: Create a SQL Login based on the ASYMMETRIC KEY

In the master database we will need to create a SQL Login that we be generated from the asymmetric key from Step 2. This login will allow SQL Server to access the assembly and execute based on the permissions in step 4.

USE MASTER
GO
 
-- Create a login from the asymmetric key to access the CLR
CREATE LOGIN FirstSQLCLR FROM ASYMMETRIC KEY FirstSQLCLR;

Step 4: Grant Permissions to Assemblies using the SQL Login

In the master database we need to assign assembly permissions to the Login from Step 3. We are choosing UNSAFE because it give us the most flexibility, however depending on your needs you may want to choose SAFE or EXTERNAL ACCESS. See the CLR Integration Code Access Security for more details

USE MASTER
GO
 
-- Set the assembly permission level for the login
GRANT UNSAFE ASSEMBLY TO FirstSQLCLR;

Step 5: Sign the SQL CLR Project with the asymmetric key

Back in Visual Studio, we need to access the project properties. We will right click on the “FirstSQLCLR” project and select “Properties”. When the properties window opens, we will select the “SQL CLR” option. We will select “UNSAFE” as the Permission Level and then click on the “Signing” button. This will open the Signing dialog box. In this dialog box we will select the “Sign the assembly” checkbox, then using the drop down list we will browse for the asymmetric key created in Step 1.

Deploy the CLR Objects

The Target Database Setting window will open. Here we will need to select the SQL instance and Database we want to deploy the SQL CLR object to. To configure the SQL Instance, select the “Edit…” button to complete the instance settings, specify the database name, and click on the “Publish” Button. We could script this out, however, that is a discussion for another day.

If the deployment was successful you will see a window like below.

Moving over to the SQL Instance, if we refresh the database, we should now see the SQL CLR procedures and CLR function.

Execute the CLR Objects

Now that we have successfully deployed the SQL CLR Objects, we can try to execute them. Call a SQL CLR procedure looks very similar to a standard procedure in SQL Server. We will create variables for the date and format parameters and pass them to the procedure.

USE [FirstSQLCLR]
GO
 
DECLARE @sqlDateTime DATETIME = '2020-05-13 21:25:02.833'
      , @CSharpDateFormat VARCHAR(50) = 'yyyyMMdd'
 
EXEC [dbo].[DateFormatMessage] @sqlDateTime, @CSharpDateFormat

After we execute the procedure, we may see a message that looks like this: Msg 6263, Level 16, State 1, Line 7 Execution of user code in the .NET Framework is disabled. Enable “clr enabled” configuration option.

Here is a sample call.

This error is because the current instance is not configured to allow SQL CLR objects from executing. We can turn this on with the following query to reconfigure the instance with the clr enabled flag.

EXEC sp_configure 'clr enabled', 1;  
RECONFIGURE;  
GO

After we apply the configuration setting and try to execute the procedure again we should have a successful query call and see the following result. Here you can see the formatted date in the Message window.

Let’s try running the other procedure DateFormatResults, notice that this time instead of the procedure returning a string value to the message window we see the data returned in the Results window. Here is the code to call the procedure and the results.

USE [FirstSQLCLR]
GO
 
DECLARE @sqlDateTime DATETIME = '2020-05-13 21:25:02.833'
      , @CSharpDateFormat VARCHAR(50) = 'yyyyMMdd'
 
EXEC [dbo].[DateFormatResult] @sqlDateTime, @CSharpDateFormat

Finally let’s take a look at executing the SQL CLR Function DateFormatFunction. Again we call this the same as we would call a user defined function. This time we will call the function in a select statement and the result is returned in the Results window.

USE [FirstSQLCLR]
GO
 
DECLARE @sqlDateTime DATETIME = '2020-05-13 21:25:02.833'
      , @CSharpDateFormat VARCHAR(50) = 'yyyyMMdd'
 
SELECT [dbo].[DateFormatFunction] (@sqlDateTime, @CSharpDateFormat)

Summary

This was a “brief” introduction into creating SQL CLR objects from Visual Studio database projects. We took a look at the permission configuration with signing assemblies and creating asymmetric keys. In a future post we will look at creating another SQL CLR procedure where we read JSON objects. This will help show how to incorporate additional binaries into SQL Server. After that, we will finally get to the craziness with SQL Server, SSAS, CLR, JSON, and Visual Studio Database Projects.

Dave + SQL Server = Ingenious SQL….

SQL Thoughts from @IngeniousSQL

Tag: Assembly

JSON to DataSet SQL CLR

Simple SQL CLR Objects