SQL Server Developer Tools (Juneau)–first look

I have been preparing a talk (for an internal Microsoft product training) on the new SQL Server Developer Tools (or SSDT – code named ‘Juneau), based on the SQL Server vNext CTP 3 (code named – ‘Denali’).

I encourage you to try this out.  To do so, you’ll need to have Visual Studio 2010, with SP1 installed.  Then you’ll probably want to download and install a version SQL Server Denali CTP 3, AFTER that you can download and install the CTP for Juneau. 

*Note – if you prefer to install ONLY the Juneau tools and NOT Denali CTP 3, you can do this.  When I ran the install, I first got some failures in the installer, but as I clicked continue, the install did succeed eventually.*

Start by taking a look at the new node in the Visual Studio Server Explorer>SQL Server (as shown below with the [new] local instance, a SQL Azure instance, a SQL Denali instance, and a SQL Server 2008 R2 instance).  Right click on any database in this node to try out the new ‘Create new project’ (for off-line database development) or the ‘Schema Compare’ features.

Of particular interest to SQL Azure developers is that the Juneau tools are version-aware.  What this means is that you can target your development to SQL Azure (or other versions) and the tools will provide you with warnings, highlights, etc…in your T-SQL code that are specific to that particular version.

There are a couple of good talks from TechEd North America on the topic of Juneau as well.  The first one covers the new features around database lifecycle management.

The second video covers future features (the bits don’t seem to be released to the public yet) in Entity Framework and Juneau.

As I work on my talk I am wondering how those of you who have been using ‘Data Dude’ are finding SSDT? Drop me a note via this blog.

Also, I’ll publish the presentation after I give it.