Visual Studio Team Edition for DB Pros Launch

So… looks like Microsoft Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals (which currently happens to be the Microsoft product that has the longest name in the Microsoft Product Catalog) will be RTM on November 30.

Ed and I have been invitied to sit on the Expert Panel for the Dallas Launch Event on December 13. You can find more details about the event here. We look forward to seeing you there.

DB Pro (former “Data Dude”) is a great addition to the Visual Studio Team System and has a lot of cool and useful features.

1. Brings in the database developers and includes them in the collaboration using Team Foundation Server.
2. Database Schema is now able to be put into source control! This enables a group to manage changes to the database with all of the version control features TFS brings to the table.
3. Generates Data for testing.
4. Produces database schema change scripts.
5. Allows creation of unit tests for the database.
6. Rename Refactoring across entire database! Unfortunately, it will not rename objects that you have used in code. For instance, if you have a data layer project, it will not change stored procedures or parameter names if you changed them in the DB project.
7. Schema Comparisons (between Projects and Live Databases, and DB to DB)
8. Data Comparisons (same)

Things that this release did not have in it that I hope to see in the future:

1. Data Modeling Tools
2. Intellisense for T-SQL (Although I really understand how daunting of a task that would be because of how the syntax of T-SQL was designed.
3. I’m sure there are other things that I think are needed but I’ll add them as I think of them.

Very exciting times!

Ed B.