With current interest in cloud computing, migration to SQL Azure is a hot topic. Migrating a database to the cloud is a significant undertaking, with many architectural challenges to be considered. High among these is that some features of SQL Server...

I am pleased to announce the first release of SSDT Power Tools . The SSDT team will be leveraging Power Tools as a mechanism to deliver new functionality and experiences through frequent updates, of which this is the first example. In this first iteration...

Schema Compare is an incredibly useful tool, providing a visual head over SSDT’s model differencing and update engine. It can be used to compare any combination of database, project or dacpac, and allows selective update of the target schema (via...

With the release of SSDT RTW, it is no longer required to remove previous installations of SSDT before upgrading to a newer release. This means that if you have CTP4 or CTP4 Update 1 on your machine and you wish to upgrade to RTW, you can install RTW...

In the Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview, you were able to link an Entity Data Model (.edmx) with a SQL Server Data Tools database project or database model. In Visual Studio 11 Beta, you no longer have that option. What happened? The SSDT team released...

We received a lot of feedback from our SSMS users that they wanted to continue using familiar SSMS keyboard mappings when using SQL Server Data Tools. We heard these requests and have produced a custom keyboard profile, the “SqlServerManagement...

We are pleased to announce that the first production release of SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) is now available for download. This release of SSDT represents an important step towards our continued investment and commitment to providing first class tooling...

In many cases a database needs to be deployed with data pre-populated in some tables. Loading static data into tables that are referenced from other tables is a common case – examples might be customer types, address types, data states, etc. In...

For our upcoming release, we made some changes to our connected SQL editor toolbar based on feedback from the MSDN forums, SQL Pass, and Microsoft Connect. We hope you like the new design. Our design goals: Streamlined experiences putting the most important...

SSDT CTP4 installs components and dependencies that are incompatible with the Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview. As a result, regardless of installation order, these two products are not supported in a side-by-side scenario. Any attempt to tweak installations...

SQL Azure has recently introduced support for federated databases which enables an elastic scale-out solution in the cloud. SQL Azure Federations introduces new syntax and management behaviors that are not currently supported by SSDT. Support for federated...

"I just installed SSDT but can't find it!" If this sounds like you, read on... If you installed SSDT in the stand-alone shell you should have no problems- confusion sometimes occurs when SSDT is installed into an existing VS2010 Pro or Ultimate installation...

We are excited to announce that our first incremental update of SSDT CTP4 is now available for download! Download it here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/hh297027 This new release replaces the existing feed and can be accessed via all of the...

Since the release of SSDT CTP4, we have become aware of an installation issue dealing with Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1. We are working on a fix, but below is a temporary workaround that can be employed to successfully install SSDT CTP4. Symptom...

SSDT CTP4 is now available for download in our full language set. Download links are available directly on our download site . This page can also be reached through the SQL Server 2012 RC0 Installation Center. If you have already installed SQL Server...

We are happy to announce that SQL Server Data Tools CTP4 (SSDT) is now available for download here ! This release is fully integrated and compatible with SQL Server 2012 RC0. Please note that due to continued propagation problems, we are only able to...

  What is SQL Server Data Tools? SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) is a toolset that allows professional database and application developers to carry out all their database design work for SQL Server and SQL Azure within Visual Studio. SSDT provides a...

Today, the SQL Server Data Tools team is proud to announce the public release of SSDT CTP4 (formerly SQL Server Developer Tools, Code-name “Juneau”)! This newest version, CTP4, can be downloaded here .This marks another milestone in delivering...

If you have previously installed SQL Server Developer Tools, CTP3 Code-named “Juneau”  and are wanting to upgrade to the SSDT CTP4 bits released today, this post will provide the necessary steps to totally remove CTP3 from your machine. Keep in mind...

The table below provides a comparison between the feature set of SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) CTP4 and that of the existing Visual Studio 2010 Database Projects (VSDB). To see an enumeration of common project conversion issues and their workarounds, please...

This post is a guide to some of the more common problems that can be encountered when converting an existing VS2010 Database Project (VSDB) to an SSDT project. Possible solutions and workarounds are included where applicable. If you encounter a problem...

The goal of SSDT is to be fully in sync with SQL Server releases. We are in the final stages of propagating SSDT CTP4 for SQL Server 2012 RC0 to the download centers, but at this point the release is not yet available. As it stands now, all of the...

With the new Database Project in the latest version of SQL Server Developer Tools, Code-named "Juneau", you can now perform your database development in the same environment as your application development. Check out this MSDN Magazine article by Jamie...

Today is a big day for the team: we are proud to announce that SQL Server Developer Tools, code-named "Juneau", CTP3 is finally available to the public! To prepare for this launch, we have completedly revamped our MSDN Data Developer Center . You can...

The TechEd North America 2011 site provides many HOLs for online access. If you want to play with Juneau but are still waiting for us to go public, now is the time to get started . Notice that you may have to create a new myTechEd ID to download the lab...