Visual Studio 2011 beta - Database project - Data-tier only???

Question

We have a few solutions using VS2010 database projects where the build output is a .dbschema file, and it is deployed through the VSDBCMD.exe utility.  The development and deployment works great!

Looking at the VS2011 beta, the database project only supports an output type of "Data-tier application (.dacpac)".

Where has the standard "SQL Server 2008" or "SQL Server 2005" project versions gone?  Has VSDBCMD been deprecated?

Please respond, thank you.

Answer 1

Take a look at this thread in another forum: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vsautotest/thread/88987771-aeb8-471e-be08-60d3cf4940d4

Long story short is that the database portion of Visual studio is moving to something called Sql Server Developer tools (SSDT) code named "Juneau". Other relevant links are in that thread as well.

---

Tim

Answer 2

Thanks Tim for your kindly help.

As far as I know that the database deployment feature in the VS11 Beta is somewhat different from that in VS2010. When you open one database project (.dbproj) which is created with VS2010 in VS11 Beta, you will actually upgade it to .sqlproj file which is the database project type of SSDT. SSDT is replacing Team Foundation Database Projects in VS11.

When you work with the .sqlproj project in VS11 Beta, you will find that actually there is neither .dbschema nor .deploymanifest file (which will be used in the vsdbcmd.exe) generated. I think that may be the reason why vsdbcmd.exe is not installed together with the VS11 Beta product.

Thanks.

---

Vicky Song [MSFT]
MSDN Community Support | Feedback to us

Answer 3

As Vicky said, SSDT is an evolution of the existing Visual Studio Database project type. You can upgrade your existing .dbproj files to SSDT files (.sqlproj) in VS or create new ones by adding a new SQL Server Database Project.  One project can target any of the versions of SQL that you used VS2010 database projects for.

SQLPackage is the replacement for vsdbcmd.exe for SSDT projects.  You can learn more about how to use sqlpackage here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh550080(VS.103).aspx and the SSDT forum is a great place for any questions you run into using the tool.

Thanks,

Janet Yeilding