One of the tools I recently came across was SSDT for SQL Server. SSDT stands for SQL Server Data Tools. This tool once downloaded and installed integrates with the VS 2010 Professional environment. It is powerful tool which provides lot of database related functionality and extends the current database features available within VS. In one sense it is like providing SSMS type functionality from VS. That being said the question might arise what would be reason to have two feature similar tools SSMS and SSDT. There are some features which stand out in SSDT. One of the feature available in SSDT is Compare Schemas, this would allow one to compare database schemas, this would be very handy when one has Dev,QA,UAT and Production environments. This would provide the database admin/developer an ability to maintain consistency of schemas across all environments. The other feature which i liked was the ability to script out data from a table. This is very useful when there are certain tables that need to populated with base data in a new installation or a testing environment. The interface of SSDT is very similar to the SSMS interface the difference being the options which are available. One of the Pre-requisites when installing on VS 2010 is that SP1 of VS 2010 should be installed. There is a very good website on msdn which has all the information needed:
Microsoft SQL Server Data Tools ...
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/tools.aspx
In the above site there is also an article related to Getting Started with LocalDB Debugging using SSDT
where in the concept of LocalDB is explained.
In Summary SSDT is a good tool for Database/BI folks who are hands-on while working with VS2010, in the future I will explore the options on this tool and writeup some blog posts.
No comments:
Post a Comment