Tag: SQL Server

New updates are now available for SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT). The latest update is called SQL Server Data Tools – September 2012. You can get the update from here:

SSDT for Visual Studio 2012: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/jj650015

SSDT for Visual Studio 2010: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/jj650014

As posted on the following blog post, here is a recap of what’s new:

“What’s New?

Visual Studio 2012

In keeping with our goal of supporting the most recent version of Visual Studio, this release of SSDT supports the Visual Studio 2012 shell. SSDT – September 2012 contains several bug fixes to the SSDT version that shipped in Visual Studio 2012 and this release can be applied as an update on top of Visual Studio 2012 Professional, Premium, and Ultimate Editions. If one of these SKUs is not present on the box, running the SSDT installer for Visual Studio 2012 will lay down a standalone version of SSDT for the Visual Studio 2012 Integrated Shell.

Keep in mind that the underlying engine and functionality for SSDT – September 2012 is the same for both Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Studio 2012, so you don’t need to upgrade to Visual Studio 2012 to use the latest version of SSDT. If you wish to have both shells of SSDT in your environment, they can exist side by side and SSDT projects will successfully round-trip between both shells.

LocalDB Configuration Improvements

We received feedback that SSDT’s policy of creating a new localdb instance for each SSDT solution was too verbose, so we created a single localdb instance called Projects to host all the project debug databases. We’ve also enhanced SQL Server Object Explorer by surfacing the default localdb instance and enabling the deletion of localdb instances.

Support for ANSI_NULLS and QUOTED_IDENIFIER Properties

In previous releases, SSDT didn’t support database objects with non-standard ANSI_NULLS or QUOTED_IDENTIFIER properties. SSDT – September 2012 has enabled this scenario by adding support for ANSI_NULLS and QUOTED_IDENTIFIER properties on project and script files.

Updated Data-Tier Application Framework

SSDT – September 2012 includes the latest redist of SQL Server Data-Tier Application Framework (DACFx), which contains several feature enhancements and bug fixes. Most notably, the updated DACFx version enables packaging and deploying data using SqlPackage.exe. You can learn more about the new DACFx release here.

Updated SSDT Power Tools

The September 2012 update is compatible with updated Power Tools that include new features and support for both Visual Studio 2012 and Visual Studio 2010 shells.

SSDT Power Tools for Visual Studio 2012

SSDT Power Tools for Visual Studio 2010

Bug fixes to customer-reported issues

This release includes many bug fixes for issues reported by customers using SSDT RTW or Visual Studio 2012 RTM. Here are some of the most impactful bugs that this release addresses:

· Unable to override Publish Profile properties when using the msbuild command line

· Slow performance on "Add New Item" from SSDT project

· Absence of debugger functionality due to errors in assembly registration

· Publish fails with no message when "extended verification" is disabled

· SSDT overwrites Visual Studio shortcut on Windows8

· Steps to edit and save a Publish Profile editor aren’t intuitive”

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 an update script in the case of a dacpac). We’ve made some significant changes to the tool for the RTW release, improving its look and feel, particularly to make it easier to digest and process comparison results. This post describes many of Schema Compare’s key features – some of which surfaced in CTP4 – with a screen shot at the bottom that highlights several of them.

First, the visual comparison ‘language’ of the results grid:

Differences-Only by Default: By default the grid contains differences only (with empty folders removed) – if there is only one difference you will see just one item. And the grid always contains all the actions resulting from the comparison – while you can hide an action temporarily within a contracted group it is always present in the grid and will apply to the update or script unless you exclude it by unchecking the action.

Equal Objects filter:
A toolbar button adds equal objects to the grid. Enabling this is useful if you want to review, for example, unchanged columns alongside the changed columns in a table.

Unsupported Actions filter: You can also choose to see unsupported actions – these result from differences for which there is no supported action that can be taken on the target. These typically result from differences in server objects or built-in types between schema versions.

Action Icons: Actions (Add, Change, and Delete) are visualized using icons, making it easier to absorb a set of changes at a glance. The checkbox alongside an icon indicates if the action will be included in the update or generated script. If there is no icon the item will not be included in an update or script.

Grayed Items: Items that do not contribute to the update are grayed – excluded actions, unsupported actions and equal objects are all grayed. Folders are grayed when all their contents are grayed making it easy to see when a group of differences have all been excluded without you needing to drill in.

Grouping: By default, items are grouped by action so you can quickly assess what changes will be made on update. You can also group the results by object type or by schema. You can expand or collapse a group to temporarily hide detail, and you can exclude all or include all objects in a group.

Refactor Highlighting: Schema Compare processes the refactor log if present when targeting a database. Refactoring is indicated in the grid as a change action with the source name bolded to highlight the new schema and/or name. Refactoring will cause objects to be renamed in the database. Refactoring sometimes also shows up as a second order effect on other objects that SQL Server will modify when applying the rename. These will not be marked as actions in the grid as you cannot exclude them, but you will see the changed script if you select the affected object.

Probably the biggest set of changes affects the script difference pane. While the grid provides a great overview, to see all changes to an object in the grid you have to fully expand it, which, can quickly clutter the view if you’re reviewing many objects. To address this we’ve focused more attention on the script differencing experience – after all, you are writing and editing object scripts to begin with. Changes include:

Expanded Object Scripts: The script difference pane now shows the combined scripts for an object and its hierarchical children. This gives a complete picture of all the changes affecting an object in one easy-to-scan place. To complement this, the Next and Previous buttons step between top-level objects only. Together, these two changes can dramatically simplify scanning through the results of a comparison.

Enhanced Script Differencing: The script difference algorithm now treats child objects as discrete entities, more effectively highlighting those that have been added, deleted or changed. The color scheme is now more subtle and better reinforces the direction of changes. And remember that you can expand the script pane or swap it to the top – so you can easily optimize the layout to better focus on reviewing scripts.

The screen shot below highlights many of these improvements.

Reference
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ssdt/archive/2012/03/23/schema-compare-improvements.aspx

On March 6, 2012, Microsoft released the first official release of the “SQL Server Data Tools” (SSDT) to the web. Even though this release accompanies SQL Server 2012 RTM, you can use SSDT against SQL Server 2005 or later, including SQL Azure. So download it now! and get started developing and deploying your SQL Server databases using SQL Server Data Tools.

“SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) is a free database development environment for SQL Server which is hosted inside the Visual Studio shell. Even though SSDT will first ship as part of SQL Server 2012, it supports all existing SQL Server versions starting with SQL Server 2005, including SQL Azure. This means you can use it today to author, debug and deploy your database schemas targeting SQL Server 2005 SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2012 and SQL Azure.

SSDT builds upon the declarative database development foundations established by Visual Studio database projects, as such it provides a rich set of database schema authoring and deployment capabilities which is fully integrated in to the Visual Studio development environment.”

You can also download SSDT from the Web Platform Installer. Navigate to Products on the top and then to Database on the left side. SQL Server Data Tools will be in the list near the bottom. This is a free tool and will integrate into your VS2010 IDE.

Resources

The following are great blogs about SQL Server Data Tools:

• SQL Server Data Tools: http://sqlproj.com/
• SQL Server Data Tools Team Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ssdt/