Importing & Exporting Azure SQL databases

Database copy

You can create a copy of a database using T-SQL:

CREATE DATABASE <dbname> AS COPY OF <server>.<sourceDatabase> (EDITION = 'Standard', SERVICE_OBJECTIVE = 'S12')

While you can change the service objective during the copy, it doesn't seem possible to change the edition e.g.:

CREATE DATABASE <dbname> AS COPY OF <server>.<sourceDatabase> (EDITION = 'Premium', SERVICE_OBJECTIVE = 'P4')

Will give the error The edition 'Standard' does not support the service objective 'P4'.

Similarly, you can't set the maximum size of the database during the copy either.

To change the edition and/or max size, alter the database after the copy:

ALTER DATABASE [<dbname>] MODIFY (EDITION = 'Premium', SERVICE_OBJECTIVE = 'P4', MAXSIZE = 100 GB);

Single Database Provisioned Throughput (DTU) Editions: Free, Basic, Standard, Premium or DataWarehouse Single Database Reserved (vCore) Editions: GeneralPurpose, Hyperscale, BusinessCritical

ElasticPool Basic: Basic Standard: S0, S1, S2, S3, S4, S6, S7, S9 or S12 Premium: P1, P2, P4, P6, P11 or P15 Azure Synapse Analytics: DW100 - DW30000c

This also works between subscriptions, using the exact same SQL username and password (e.g. sa with the same password).

Import / Export in Azure

Import and Export jobs use shared regional compute instances and have unpredictable and typically slow performance. I recommend you use SqlPackage if possible when importing and exporting database packages such as .bacpac and .dacpac.

SqlPackage

SqlPackage in GitHub Actions

SqlPackage already comes with the hosted GitHub Actions workers.

An example of manually installing SqlPackage on Ubuntu Linux:

if test -f "/opt/sqlpackage/sqlpackage"; then
    echo "::debug::SqlPackage already installed in the context"
else
    sudo apt-get install libunwind8
    wget -progress=bar:force -q -O sqlpackage.zip \
    https://aka.ms/sqlpackage-linux \
    && unzip -qq sqlpackage.zip -d /opt/sqlpackage \
    && chmod a+x /opt/sqlpackage/sqlpackage \
    && rm sqlpackage.zip
fi

Further Reading

References

Azure/run-sqlpackage-action