DbUp VS Evolve

I am not super familiar with SqlDataProvider, but its generally purpose is to interact with the DB at runtime, and not to migrate sql databases. I would probably use some ddl migration tool like DbUp, https://github.com/DbUp/DbUp, to handle table creation.

I've used a simple migration tool called DbUp https://github.com/DbUp/DbUp

Yea - it usually takes some diligence to maintain sprocs in a nice way. When my teams have used dapper in a production environment/application we usually combine it with something like dbup which lets us source control all of the objects/up/down scripts. It's like EF migrations but works with simple scripts.

Check out DbUp This is what we use and created a custom app that gets invoked within our pipeline

If you want to stay in C# land, look at Evolve.

So, in general, one would use a versioned database schema that would connect to a database and execute a series of SQL files. For C# you have things like Evolve.

So you don't really source control the data, but you do source control the database schema. A common way in the .net world to do this is to use something like evolve which basically allows you to version SQL scripts and have them executed on application launch.

Been using https://github.com/lecaillon/Evolve for many years. Its a .Net Core equivalent to Flyway. You run plain old SQL scripts and just follow a file naming convention. It can run embedded inside a project, it has a .Net Tool and a standalone CLI. The SQL scripts can also be embedded in the executable or as external files.

I've been using Evolve in the past, very simple and effective.