Getting Started with Database Features in Visual Studio

You can use Visual Studio to help manage the development life cycle of your databases as an important part of your application development. You can use Visual Studio to implement the concept of an isolated development environment for each database professional. Team members can work on schema-related activities without interfering with other team members or putting the production environment at risk. By managing database change, you can provide better communication and closer coordination among developers of software and databases.

Common High-Level Tasks

In the following table, you can find descriptions of common tasks that support this scenario and links to more information about how you can successfully complete those tasks. In addition, you should determine how these tasks best fit with the development methods of your team.

High-Level Task	Supporting Content
Learn how you can manage changes to your database by using Visual Studio: You can learn how to use Visual Studio to manage your databases and servers as an integrated part of your overall application development. You can also learn how Visual Studio integrates with Team Foundation Server.	Managing Database Change Architectural Overview of the Database Features of Visual Studio
Learn which SQL Server permissions you need: The specific permissions that you need vary based on what action you want to perform in Visual Studio. For example, you need specific permissions to import objects and settings from a database or to deploy updates, but not to create or modify a database project.	Required Permissions for Database Features of Visual Studio
Get hands-on experience: You can complete a series of introductory walkthroughs to learn how you can use Visual Studio in your application life cycle. These walkthroughs introduce you to the practices of offline database development, establishing a quality baseline, and performing iterative database development tasks.	Walkthrough: Creating an Isolated Database Development Environment Walkthrough: Establishing a Baseline for the Isolated Development Environment Walkthrough: Performing Iterative Database Development in an Isolated Development Environment
Perform common tasks: As you use Visual Studio, you will frequently open a database or server project and specify the information that is required to connect to a database.	How to: Open a Database or Server Project How to: Create a Database Connection
Troubleshooting: You can find information about how to identify and resolve problems that you might encounter when you manage changes to a database or a database server.	Troubleshooting Development Issues (in the Application Lifecycle Management features of Visual Studio)

Related Sections

• Creating and Managing Databases and Data-tier Applications in Visual Studio
  By creating a database project or server project, you can put your database or database server under version control and establish a testing baseline. Then you and your team can develop and refine the schema and its objects, build and deploy updates, and then maintain your databases in a production environment.

• Extending the Database Features of Visual Studio
  You can define additional types of refactoring, rules for analyzing database code, conditions for testing databases, or ways to automatically generate types of test data.

• API Reference for Database Features of Visual Studio
  You can look up information about the namespaces, classes, methods, and properties that you use to extend the features of Visual Studio Premium.