Introduction
While working with Unified Developer Experience (UDE) environments in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations, developers may occasionally encounter database synchronization issues during package deployment. Recently, after deploying a new UDE environment with Version 47, I experienced a package failure when attempting to deploy custom models.
The package deployment process failed with a database synchronization error, preventing the custom model from being successfully deployed. This article explains the error, the troubleshooting steps attempted, and the workaround that ultimately resolved the issue.
Error
After mapping custom models and initiating the package deployment of a custom model, the deployment failed with the following message:
Error Message: "Microsoft.Dynamics.CAP.Iris.Connectors.Exceptions.DSSidecarOperationException: DS/Sidecar operation: dbsync failed with the error code FailedDependency; error message: Failure happened while running DBSync on environment
This error typically indicates that the database synchronization process encountered a dependency issue while attempting to apply metadata changes to the database schema.
Workaround
Workaround 1: Execute Full Database Synchronization
The first troubleshooting step was to perform a full database synchronization.
Steps:
- Open Visual Studio.
- Navigate to Dynamics 365 menu.
- Select Synchronize Database.
- Wait for the synchronization process to complete.
- Retry the package deployment.
Workaround 2: Synchronize the Specific Table
The next approach was to identify the table containing the modified field and perform synchronization only for that object.
Steps:
- Add the affected table or field to the project.
- Right-click the project.
- Select Synchronize Database.
- Allow Visual Studio to execute synchronization for the specific table.
This approach is often effective when a schema change has not been correctly applied to a particular table.
Workaround 3: Build and Synchronize Custom Model Before Deploying All Models
The issue was ultimately resolved by performing the following sequence:
- Build the custom model.
- Synchronize the database.
- Verify that the build and synchronization complete successfully.
- Deploy all custom and ISV models.
- Execute database synchronization again.
Conclusion
DBSync failures in UDE environments can be frustrating because the error message often provides limited information about the underlying dependency issue. In my case, both a full database synchronization and table-level synchronization failed to resolve the problem.
The successful workaround was to first build the custom model, synchronize the database, and only then deploy all custom and ISV models. If you encounter a similar FailedDependency error in Version 47 or later UDE environments, this approach may save significant troubleshooting time and help restore a successful deployment process.
