Wow, I am happy to announce that CTP6 of Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals is available for download, right now!

We took an extra week plus 1 day to get here, but I am sure it is worth the wait, this is an overview of the highlights in CTP6

  • Full support for SQL Server 2000 & 2005 objects, the parser work has been completed
  • Extended Properties support, we now import and deploy all your extended properties
  • Inline constraint support, if you do not want to separate them out, we allow them inline as well
  • Pre- and post deployment scripts population during Import Script
  • Full support for command line build & deploy and Team Build
  • A new Import Schema Wizard which is also integrated with the New Project Wizard to make project creation and import a single stop shop
  • Synchronize your database project from Schema Compare, compare your project with a database and pull the differences in to the database project
  • Schema refactoring is now allowed even if you have files in a warning state
  • Resolve 3 and 4 part name usage when the referenced database is locally present, same for linked servers
  • The product no longer installs SQL Express; you can pick your own SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition or SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition instance on the local box. When you first start the product for the first time we will ask you to choose an local instance to use
  • Display detailed Schema Object properties in the VS Property Window for selected objects in the Schema View
  • Separation of user target database settings through user project files, this allows users to work against a different target instance without changing the main project file.
  • We made great progress on the overall stability and performance of the product across the board, project creation, importing your schema, reloading project and making changes to your schema
  • And last but not least we fixed many reported customer problems!

This is the last CTP where we will ask you to recreate your project file, sorry. After this we will provide an automatic upgrade of your project and script files.

Before you installing CTP6 you have to uninstall ALL previously installed CTP's. If you are using the CTP5 Patch, you have to uninstall this first using the Uninstall link in your Start ► Program Files ► Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 ► Uninstall

After that you can uninstall CTP5 using Add/Remove Programs

If you uninstalled all previous CTP's you are ready to install CTP6 from this location.

Some other notes:

  • CTP6 will expire March 1st 2007; yes we will release the final version before this time :)
  • CTP6 installs on top of Visual Studio 2005 Pro and higher
  • CTP6 requires a local SQL Server instance either SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition or SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition, we no longer use or support SQL Express; the final product will include SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition, but you need to install it yourself, the installation is not integrated. 
  • CTP6 installs the redist of SQL Server SMO, this dependency is will be removed in the final release. When installing, make sure that all application using SMO are closed, preventing the necessity for a reboot after install

Please let us know what you think, either through the MSDN forum or send us e-mail.

Thanks for your support,
-GertD
"DataDude" Development Manager