How To: Package Without Deploying to the REF Database

If you need to package a new change without deploying it to the REF database, you can use label logic to identify the changesets not to deploy. The REF database is typically a schema-only database (no or limited data) and used in the first deployment step in a pipeline. The first label in the REF dbdef will be used as a label for the pipeline. 

1. Set a label expression for the dbdef for the REF database. The expression should exclude changes marked with a particular label. For example, the label expression could include a !skip_ref element to mean that when a skip_ref label is found for a changeset, do not deploy the changeset. If the label used to identify the pipeline is "main", then the resulting label expression on the dbdef would be: (main AND !skip_ref) 
2. Set a label in a metadata.properties file. The label is applied to all changesets generated from scripts in the directory where the metadata.properties file is found. For example, set labels=skip_ref. 
3. Put a copy of the metadata.properties file in each of the desired script directories used by the project for packaging (for example, ddl, ddl_direct, sql, sql_direct). 
4. Run Deployment Packager.