31Oct 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Visual Studio Team System Database Edition GDR RC

Tools, Visual Studio
I'm a bit late to notice this, but Gert Drapers announced on Monday that the release candidate for VSTSDBE, or good ole VSDB as I've decided to call it, is now available. I figured they'd do something during the Professional Developers Conference (where supposedly a new printing of my book was being given out). Now I need to get on the stick & upgrade my virtual... maybe. According to the post, functionality hasn't changed. Maybe I should just leave everything alone on my machine until after PASS... Nah! I'll post progress for the uninstall, the install and the recreation of the compound project.
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07Oct 2008 by Grant Fritchey 5 Comments

Composite Projects in DBPro

Visual Studio
I know the name is supposed to be Visual Studio Team System Database Edition, but DBPro, like Data Dude, slides off the tongue and the other doesn't. Anyway... I've been working with CTP 17 since it came out this week. So far, knock wood, no issues. I was trying to work out how to get multi-platform security working in some manner other than post-deployment scripts. Everything I tried failed. I finally posted a question on the MS forum. It was suggested that I use composite projects... What? A little research later and I'm off and running. Now, with the ability to chain projects together, you can provide two projects, one with all the structures, and the other with only specialized differences, such as you might find in a development server.…
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12Sep 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

VSTS 2008 Database Edition GDR CTP 16

Tools, Visual Studio
CTP 15 utterly hosed the virtual device I had it on. I tried uninstalling, but it just wouldn't come off clean. I finally have rebuilt the virtual and reinstalled everything except VSTSDB GDR. Having learned my lesson (the hard way as usual), I started a differential on my virtual for the install of CTP 16 so that I can roll back and install the release candidate and the release as they come out without having to go through that whole rebuild thing again. While Gert & crew are still making some changes, the fundamentals are still there so my presentation at PASS should work fine as currently defined. The only problem I ran into was that I couldn't get the database to deploy by simply clicking on the deploy menu…
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10Sep 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

PASS Summit

PASS, Tools, Visual Studio
It looks like this year is going to be pretty good. They've expanded the program. If you're not going, you should consider it. Personally, I'm pretty excited. I'm presenting our build and deployment process using Visual Studio Team System Database Edition. I've got the first half of the presentation down cold because it's how we've been doing our deployments for a couple of years now. The second half concerns me a bit. I'm showing the new release that works with SQL Server 2008. Unfortunately that new release isn't done and I keep having to update my code and slides as the new versions come out with different functionality. I'm more than a little bit nervous about that part of the presentation. I wish there was a way to bounce it…
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15Jul 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Benefits of a Tear Down & Rebuild in a Database

Tools, Visual Studio
Using the Team Edition of Visual Studio for Databases (VSDB) enables you to build a database out of source control. This means you can treat your database like code, as much as you can. The fact is, because of persistence, a database just isn't code. Because you have to keep all the data previously entered, when you deploy a new version of your database to production, you don't simply get to replace the database like you do with the code. You have to run scripts that alter that which can be altered, but preserve the existing data everywhere. That's just how it is in production. You have to do the work necessary to protect your data. Not so in Development. Development (and QA, Test, Financial Test, Performance Test) is the place…
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12Jun 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

VSTS 2008 Database Edition GDR: Final First Impression

Tools, Visual Studio
I finally finished my initial set of tests with the GDR CTP release. It's great! They've solved so many of the deployment problems that we had been experiencing that it's now hard to wait until they actually release the product. The bad news is, it completely changes my presentation at PASS. I'm still going to cover 2005/2008, but now I'm going to cover the GDR as well. I have one hour to hit both processes... That's not going to be easy. Anyway, they've broken everything down to either work locally only or as part of the larger project. It all gets checked into source control. It all comes back out. No manual processes (like checking in the .user file) necessary. Thank you Gert Drapers, wherever you are.
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11Jun 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

VSTS 2008 Database Edition GDR: Still More First Impressions

Tools, Visual Studio
Following on to my adventures in creating multi-environment deployment processes with the new version of Data Dude (DBPro, VSTS Database Edition, whatever we're calling it this week). I've create a new configuration, copying all the settings from the Debug configuration. I'm adding a new Deployment configuration file and making a change. The deploy worked. Woo hoo! Now to get really funky. I'll create a new "Sql command variables file:" and add a variable for setting the data directory. Now to deploy and... Urk! Failed. It's not recognizing my variable. Now I'm stuck. I've checked the syntax. It's right. I double checked it all and reran deploy. Now it works... Color me confused. Whatever. Successful test. Time to create another configuration, simulating a QA server... Got that working too. I don't…
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11Jun 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

VSTS 2008 Database Edition GDR: More First Impressions

Tools, Visual Studio
Because I was having so many problems yesterday after I tried doing everything at once, creating multiple deployments to multiple servers with a variety of different settings... Anyway, it didn't work. So today I went back to square one. I created a blank project.  Yesterday I used the schema compare to capture the database, but today I right clicked on the project and found "Import Database Objects and Settings..." which did it all for me. Yee Ha! Anyway, after getting all the objects in, I started trying to deploy. This time I got errors on FK's. It somehow changed the order on the compound keys columns. While editing, I found that if I messed up the syntax and then saved the file, I didn't get an instantaneous error. That bummed…
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10Jun 2008 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

VSTS 2008 Database Edition GDR: First Impressions

Tools, Visual Studio
Since I have to work through this thing to set up a test project to verify our build & deployment processes with the new tool (see my teeth grinding post below) I might as well post a spot evaluation of the tool as I go through it. I'm creating a new database project (and I'd rather not talk about that). Rather than go through a wizard, I decided to create a blank database project and now I'm capturing the database by using the new Schema Compare. It looks mostly the same. One new thing that came up immediately is a "Permissions" folder. It has all the GRANT CONNECT, GRANT EXECUTE ON SCHEMA that I had in my database. In the 2005 version of VSTS, we maintained this stuff in post…
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