New Visual Studio Release Made for Database Developers

Published: June 7, 2006

by Alex Woodie

Microsoft this week unveiled a new addition to its line of Visual Studio development tools designed specifically to make database professionals full-fledged members of Visual Studio development teams. Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals, as the new product will be called, will also support the next generation of Windows and Office, and will provide a foundation for the upcoming "Orcas" release of Visual Studio.

Current development tools don't go far enough to incorporate database professionals and their database management tools into the overall application development process, according to S. Somasegar, corporate vice president of the developer division at Microsoft. "The expansion of Visual Studio Team System to include data tools, along with developer productivity innovations in the upcoming Visual Studio Orcas, demonstrates Microsoft's commitment to providing tools that help individuals, teams, and organizations derive greater efficiency when building solutions on the Microsoft platform," he says.

This gap in tool coverage hurts development shops, according to Melinda Ballou, program director with IDC's application lifecycle management service. "All too frequently, schisms exist between database teams and development staff, leading to ineffective collaboration, inadequate project and code management, poor quality, and cost increases," she says.

With Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals, database architects, developers, administrators, and other professionals will be brought into the group development fold, and get to enjoy the fruits of Team Edition's integrated change-management facilities, Microsoft says. This will have the beneficial effect of streamlining changes to databases and reducing the risk of catastrophic failure related to the alteration of database schemas, the company says.

Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals will enter the Community Technology Preview (CTP) process at TechEd next week, and should be generally available by the end of the year.