Fully qualified name with dollar sign in SSDT project

Question

I was working on a tsql project, and I have noticed that the existing code used a syntax that I have not seen before. They have put a dollar sign in front of the database name for fully qualified address.

Here is one example :

SELECT  c.AccountCode, FROM **[$(SmartAdmin)]**.dbo.Customers c

If I rename the database name as SmartAdmin.dbo.Customers, Visual Studio throws error says "contains an unresolved reference to an object".

It appears to be a Visual Studio related thing, can anyone explain what is this and whether I can remove it.

Please see the attached screenshots, the last one comes from project solution file.

Answer 1

The [$(SmartAdmin)] syntax is used in an SSDT project to reference objects in other databases. To be precise, it is SQLCMD syntax.

If you have a database reference to SmartAdmin, and if the reference is set up so that [$(SmartAdmin)] properly references it, then that is not the problem. It looks like the problem is the other two references to [SmartAdmin]. Change them to look like [$(SmartAdmin)].dbo.whatever.

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Example of why these references are useful: I just edited a stored procedure I had in SSDT to misspell a column name. Within seconds, the column name was underlined in red. I then deleted the database reference the column name depended on. The red underline went away. I added the database reference back, and the column was once again underlined in red. I corrected the column name, and the red underline went away.

Without the database reference, I would have had to wait until the stored procedure was deployed, or possibly executed, to see the error. With the database reference, I found out about the problem in the editor. Just like code.