Visual Studio Team Editon for DB Pro - Mairead's version

You can now download the sample msdb database projects from Microsoft Code Gallery to create cross database references between your database project schema objects and the schema objects that reside within the msdb database.

We have provided msdb database projects for both Visual Studio Team System 2008 release of Database Edition as well as the Visual Studio Team Edition 2005 for Database Professionals Service Release 1 for both SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005.

Cross-database references requires that you define a corresponding reference in the properties of your database project. If you refer to objects in other databases but you do not define the corresponding references in your project, warnings will appear. For each database that you reference, you can define SETVAR variables that correspond to the server and database that you want to reference. When you modify an object definition to include the reference, you can define it by using these variables instead of the explicit names of the server and the database. When you build the database project, the variables are replaced by the values that you specified.

Just after we released the first SR for DB Pro, we turned around and released the power tools right on top. The goal of the powertools is to add additional enhancements to the version 1 of DBPro.

This is the first in a series of power tools releases and includes the following functionality

TSQL Static Code Analysis
• Static Code Analysis - A precursor to the functionality that will be in future versions of VSTS that will allow you to perform Static Code Analysis on T-SQL code.

Refactoring
• “Move Schema” Refactoring - Allows a user to right click on an object and move it to a different but existing schema
• SP Rename Generation - Generate a new script that will contain sp_renames for all rename refactored objects that the user can then execute.
• Wildcard Expansion - Automatically expand the wildcard in a select to the appropriate columns.
• Fully-Qualified Name Support - Automatically inject fully-qualified names when absent in a script
• Refactoring extended to Dataset - Refactor into strongly typed dataset definitions

MSBuild Tasks
• Data / Schema Compare Build Tasks - MSBuild tasks that can generate scripts as if the user had run the Data / Schema compare UI

Schema View
• API Access to Schema View - Insert / Update / Delete to schema View and list schema objects and their associated files

Dependency Tool Window
• Dependency Tree - Show the dependencies ( incoming / outgoing ) for selected schema objects in a new tool window

Miscellaneous Tools
• Script Preprocessor - Expand SQLCMD variables and include files and command line version (sqlspp.exe) & an MSBuild version ( wraps the command line version ) 

Download Details

 The powertools can be downloaded from here

The powertools will only work if you have the RTM version of the recent Service Release of DBPro installed. You can download the Service Release from here

We'd really love to hear your feedback on the tools especially the Dependency view and Static Code Analysis:-)

mairead

Folks

Just wanted to give you a heads up that, the Beta2 of Visual Studio 2008 is available for you to start coding with:-). Woohooooo

Soma's has a detailed blog on the release, check it out here

You can download the beta here on our MSDN pages

enjoy

mairead

Folks

I am happy to announce that the Service Release for Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Database Professionals has shipped

You can download the SR from the following locations

The English download center page is at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9810808c-9248-41a5-bdc1-d8210a06ed87&displaylang=en

The Service Release 1 patch file is at http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/c/7/6c77f0d1-a868-4892-a065-48e51e0a776d/VS80-KB936612-X86.exe

The KB article for the release is at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936612/

This Service Release is made available in nine languages. The links to nine languages are at:

• Italian - Italy
• Chinese - Taiwan
• Korean - Korea
• English - United States
• Chinese - China
• French - France
• German - Germany
• Spanish (Traditional Sort) - Spain
• Japanese - Japan

mairead

Folks

 We would really love to hear your feedback on the recent CTP of VSTE for Database Professionals Service Release. Have you experienced any issues from using the product? What did you like/did not like about the new functionality that was introduced?

mairead

Important Notes:

• This service release will upgrade your project file (.dbproj) when you first open your project after installing the service release. It will create a backup copy first.
• This CTP can be applied to both the retail and the trail edition of Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals.
• Since the service release is patch installer, you need to have the RTM version installed.
• If you have the hotfix installed (KB933015), you do not have to do anything, just install the this patch
• If you were one of the lucky ones that was asked to test drive the private CTP of this service release, you have to uninstall that one first.
• The installer does require that Visual Studio 2005 SP1 has been installed first
• This CTP only supports the English version of Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals; the final release will support all 9 languages.

Where can I get this:

• KB936202 article
  http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB%3bEN-US%3b936202
• Documentation:
  http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/4/c/74cfd5b0-2047-4957-800c-e0ddc90a1c88/GDR1.doc.docx
• Release Notes:
  http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/4/c/74cfd5b0-2047-4957-800c-e0ddc90a1c88/readme.htm
• Patch installer:
  http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/4/c/74cfd5b0-2047-4957-800c-e0ddc90a1c88/VS80-KB936202-X86-ENU.exe

You can provide feedback through our MSDN forum or through Microsoft Connect.

Folks

We have just announced that there will be a service release for Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals due to be released in first half of ’07.

 Check out Gert’s (aka Data Dude) blog for more detailsJ

 mairead

Thanks everyone for your great comments on whether you use database diagrams and what you'd like to see in that arena for Visual Studio.

Mairead

In order to increase developers productivity for creating schema objects traditionally in Visual Studio or SQL Server, you were able to leverage the Table Designer, Check Constraint, Foreign Key, Full Text Index, XML index, index editors and view designer.

Now that V1 is out the door, we're potentially looking into providing some object level designers support to help increase your productively when designing your table or view or stored procedure, trigger etc.

Let us know your feedback for how you would like to design these schema objects in a single object mode

- Tables

- Foreign Keys

- Full Text Index

- XML Index

- Index

- Primary Key

- Views

- Stored Procedure, Triggers, Functions(all variations) (do you even need a designer?)

What's good about the current Table/View designer in Visual Studio /SQL Server? What's bad, what do you need from a table or view designer to make designing tables and views more productive for you

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated:-)

mairead 

Like my recent post on database projects, we would like to understand your current usage of the Database Diagrams feature which shipped as part of Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005. Getting feedback on your usage, helps us to get a deeper understanding of the issues you are trying to solve and what potential work we may do around that space in the future

1) Currently what business problem are you trying to solve with database diagram as they exist in Visual Studio 2005 or SQL Server 2005?

2) How do you use Database Diagram to solve that business issue?

 3) What functionality would you need in this specific context to make your job easier to solving this issue?

4) In which environment(Visual Studio or SQL Server or both) do you avail of this functionality and why that environment?

Any feedback would be gratefully appreciated

mairead

Folks

Some of you may be familiar with the old database projects in Visual Studio 2005, 2003 and earlier versions.....here are a few images to help you recap

You can store items such as create objects scripts, change scripts and queries files etc.

 If you do use this project flavor, we are SUPER interested to know

1) What do you use the project for?

A)what is the problem you are trying to solve that makes you use this project

Please detail out what do you store in the project?

What functionality that you use,

What additional Database Project functionality would you need in order to solve this business problem

2) Have you used the new Visual Studio Team Edition For Database Professional Database Projects?

If so, would you continue to use DB Proj project system instead of the Visual Studio 2005 based database project?

WE REALLY WOULD LIKE TO HEAR YOUR FEEDBACK

Máiréad

In case you missed it, we Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals has released. Check out Matt's blog posting for the details

You can now download the trial edition from here 

As you can imagine we are super happy with the V1 release and happy to get it into the hands of the database professionals out there.

Now on to V2J

Quite a number of folks have asked what are the licensing plans for Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals. In the simplest case, if you have Team Suite you will get DBPro for free. If you do not have Team Suite then DBPro is priced at the same price as any of the other Visual Studio Team products.

Please refer to the following detailed whitepaper for additional information on pricing

You may have heard this already but we have announced the release date of Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals to be November 30th 2006. On that date we plan to RTM which means in Microsoft terminology Release to Manufacturing.Check out our MSDN product site for more information

Folks

 Both Dmitriy and I am here at Tech Ed Developer Barcelona to answer all your questions related to Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals. Please do stop by at the Ask the Expects section and let us know how you are getting on using the product or if you have any questions on the product

Mairead