The service Release Candidate (RC) for the Visual Studio 2008 Database Edition GDR is available for customers to evaluate.  This is a limited service release. The RC will be available for a short period followed by the release of the RTM version of the GDR version 2. During the RC period, customers can verify fixes to the issues listed below.  We expect to release the RTM version as soon as we have confirmed acceptance from customers waiting on specific fixes included in this release.

The RC will be provided through the Microsoft Connect Site for registered customers. If you would like to be registered for access to the RC click here to send your request to the team. Access to the RC is limited to a maximum number participants and all requests may not be granted.

Requests to evaluate the RC are no longer being accepted as the team prepares to release the RTM version of the GDR Service Release.   

The RTM version will be available to all customers through the same Microsoft Download channel customers acquired the GDR from. 

This service release can be installed on top of an existing GDR installation. This service release does not require any project upgrade for GDR based projects. This service release may require a project upgrade for some GDR projects, but the project will remain GDR RTM compatible.  The GDR v2 RC1 can be uninstalled and the GDR RTM version reinstalled if you wish. 

The issues included in this service release candidate are listed below:

Schema Validation

1. Aliased external objects do not resolve.
2. Permission type "SEND" is a database level permission.
3. Permissions with multiple INCLUDE or EXCLUDE treatment on its columns generates invalid error.
4. Common Table Expressions (CTE) names should respect the case-sensitivity.
5. Adding a permission with the object name defined as a zero string crashes VS.
6. OpenXML generates invalid warnings or errors in SQL 2000 database projects
7. Sub-queries defined at the column level should be able to reference table sources of the SELECT statement.
8. References to some SQL CLR Assemblies cannot be resolved causing invalid reference errors.
9. Schema Bound VIEWs with CAST function produces invalid error.
10. Validation of Database.sqlpermissions is very slow.

Schema Compare

1. Visual Studio crashes when comparing a composite project (which has reference to server project) to a database on server with insufficient privileges.
2. Schema Compare option to limit comparison to only objects defined in the source does not work.
3. Schema Compare option to ignore Database Role Membership does not work.
4. Schema compare write updates to project comments out all children objects when the parent object is ignored in the comparison.

Refactoring

1. Preservation of Intent doesn't handle creating a new object using a name that was previously refactor renamed.
2. Deployment fails after a refactor rename operation on a table that has an extended property on a column.

Static Code Analysis

1. SR0014: Maintain compatibility between data types rule throws an exception when analyzing some schemas.

Schema Deployment

1. Some output clauses for parameters in a STORED PROCEDURE body is omitted during deployment.
2. Composite Projects that have segmented tables and constraints causes an exception during deployment.
3. Deployment silently fails when it encounters unknown or invalid syntax from the target database.
4. Deployment is dropping computed columns when updating column collations
5. Deployment is blocked when computed persisted function column on function change.
6. Deployment fails with "An item with the same key has already been added" after the project is copied to a new location on disk or when the solution configuration is changed with a specific sequence.

VSDBCMD Command Line Utility

1. VSDBCMD.exe throws exception when importing some database schemas.
2. VSDBCMD.exe throws exception when schema being deployed has multiple references to external dbschema files.
3. VSDBCMD.exe exits incorrectly with code=0 when it encounters an unexpected exception.
4. VSDBCMD.exe depends on a registry key which prevents it from running on systems that do not have SSMS or VS installed.

Database Project System

1. SQLCMD Variables and Deployment properties files are not being persisted in the .user file when "My isolated development environment" is selected.
2. ALTER ANY DATABASE AUDIT and ALTER ANY SERVER AUDIT permissions are not imported from script.
3. Copying a solution containing a database project with database references to external dbschema files to a new location may causes deployment to encounter an exception.
   

Fixes previously communicated in service release, but are not included in this service release:

1. Preservation of Intent fails during deployment when a PRIMARY KEY is renamed .
2. Installing the GDR while Visual Studio is active causes duplicate menu buttons under the Data menu.

These 2 fixes will come in a future release.

A release date has not been established for the GDR v2 RTM service release yet, but we expect to have it out as soon as the RC is verified. We also plan to release the Power Tool refresh shortly after the GDR v2 is out. 

If you are experiencing an issue that is not listed above we invite you to submit the issue to the product team through the Microsoft Connect Site.

We will post an update about the GDR v2 RTM service release and Power Tools release in the coming weeks.