I went to an abbreviated version of the Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Database Professionals launch this morning. The reason for the shorter than usual launch is because freezing rain began falling mid-morning making roads treacherous. They thought we would appreciate getting out of there early. St. Louis has had mild winters for several years, so we forget how to drive as soon as the roads get slick. We are definitely overdue for a nasty ice storm.
Team Edition for Database Professionals, code name Data Dude, looks pretty interesting. It allows a team to use the Team Foundation Server to control the database object definitions much as you would C# or VB.Net projects. Basically, the source control becomes the "one version of the truth" about the database schema. It also can generate test data and create and perform unit tests. When building the project, it verifies that table and column names in stored procedures match the table definitions. When ready to deploy to a test server, it generates the ALTER statements to update the actual database schema.
Like many MS demos I have seen, the presenter made it look easy. I suspect that it would take some time to learn how to use this efficiently. It is also important that procedures and policies be worked out ahead of time. It doesn’t force you to follow best practices.
The required Team Foundation Server is a separate product that retails for $2700 plus $499 (USD) for each CAL. You get a CAL for each Team Edition for Database Professionals license that you purchase. If five or less people will be using the system, you can use the Workgroup Edition instead that comes with Team Edition.
The retail price for the Team Edition for Database Professionals is over $5000, but is much less if your company has an Enterprise or other agreement with Microsoft. If you currently have one of the other Team Editions, you can switch one time by visiting the MSDN site during the first 60 days of 2007.
Chris Menegay was the presenter in St. Louis. Here are some of the resources he pointed us to:
http://teamsystemrocks.com/blogs/chris_menegays_weblog/default.aspx
