🐳 SQL Server Linux with Docker

A Docker Compose configuration for running SQL Server for Linux with Full Text Search enabled. Also includes the AdventureWorks sample database.

Contents

• Prerequisites
• Quickstart
• Container features
  • Data persistence
  • Sharing files between your machine and the container
  • The dev user
  • AdventureWorks sample database
  • Full Text Search
• Configuration
  • Customizing the username and password
  • Customizing the shared folder
• Troubleshooting
  • Have you tried turning it off and on again?

Prerequisites

• Docker Desktop
• sqlcmd

Tip

You can install both prerequisites on macOS using Homebrew:

brew install --cask docker
brew install sqlcmd

Quickstart

This will build the image and start a container named mssql in the background.

docker compose -p mssql up -d --build

The container will start and perform some initial configuration on the database server. Give it a few seconds to finish up. Once it's done, you can connect to the database from your local machine using sqlcmd.

sqlcmd -U dev -P Test1234 -C

Tip

Not sure if the database server is ready? You can check the container's logs to monitor its progress either in Docker Desktop or by running docker logs mssql -f. You'll know it's ready when you see the message *** SQL Server is ready! ***.

Container features

Data persistence

Data used by the database server is stored in a Docker-managed volume called mssql-volume. This means you can safely stop (and even remove!) the container without losing your data.

Sharing files between your machine and the container

You can share files between your machine and the container by adding them to the src/ folder in this repository. You likely won't need to do this too often, because you can connect to the database server using sqlcmd from your machine, but we provide this just in case.

The dev user

By default, SQL Server comes with a user named sa that with full permissions. It's a bad practice to use this user, so the container will create a new user named dev for you. You'll still have all the permissions you need to do whatever you want with the database.

AdventureWorks sample database

The container will automatically create the AdventureWorks sample database for you, including all the tables and data using the files in adventure-works/.

These files are a copy of the original files from (microsoft/sql-server-samples)[https://github.com/microsoft/sql-server-samples], with some modifications to make them work with SQL Server for Linux.

To run queries against the database:

USE AdventureWorks;
SELECT TOP 5 FirstName, LastName FROM Person.Person;
GO

Full Text Search

Full Text Search is enabled in the container. You probably won't need to use it, but the AdventureWorks sample database makes use of it so why not? 🤷

Configuration

Customizing the username and password

You can customize the username and password for the dev user by setting the DEV_USER and SA_PASSWORD environment variables in the docker-compose.yml file.

services:
  mssql:
    # ...
    environment:
      - MSSQL_SA_PASSWORD=your-custom-password
      - DEV_USER=your-custom-username

Caution

Your password must adhere to SQL Server's password policy or the container will fail to start. It should include at least 8 characters of at least three of these four categories: uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers and non-alphanumeric symbols.

Customizing the shared folder

If you want to use a different folder to share files between your machine and the container, you can change the src/ folder in the docker-compose.yml file.

services:
  mssql:
    # ...
    volumes:
      - /path/to/a/folder/on/your/machine:/src

Troubleshooting

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

If things aren't working, try restarting the container and see if that fixes it.

docker compose -p mssql restart