Visual Studio 2017 now includes Redgate Tools to increase productivity while doing database development work. I use the VS Enterprise edition at work, so am pretty excited to leverage the productivity benefits of these tools, within Visual Studio IDE itself.

You can install Redgate Data Tools from the Visual Studio 2017 Installer.

SQL Search is available across all the editions of Visual Studio – Community, Professional and Enterprise.
SQL Prompt Core and ReadyRoll Core is available in only the Enterprise edition of Visual Studio.

• SQL Prompt Core is a great productivity tool while working with SQL Server and provides you with advanced intellisense and code completion features.
• SQL Search is another productivity tool which helps you to find SQL objects faster inside the database.
• ReadyRoll Core helps you to develop, source control and automatically deploy databases in Visual Studio using migration scripts.

One of the foremost prerequisite for Continuous Integration is to keep all the project artifacts under version control – not just the source code but also the database objects, tests, build and deployment scripts.

SQL Server Data Tools in Visual Studio transforms the traditional database development by allowing you to view, design, maintain and refactor database objects. I have been using SSDT Database projects for my database development work for a long time now, and it is interesting to see another option included in Visual Studio now in the form of ReadyRoll.

I played around with ReadyRoll, and fundamentally it seems pretty much similar to SSDT. Both these tools will help you do database development work and tie up with your CI/CD Pipeline for automated deployments.

The big difference between them is that SSDT uses State-driven approach whereas ReadyRoll uses a Migration-driven approach.

When you open the Visual Studio 2017 Installer, you can install the Redgate Data Tools through the ‘Data storage and processing’ workload —

You can also install it through the Individual Components tab —

Once you select the Redgate Tools and update your Visual Studio install, you should see a popup with the installation progress —

In my upcoming blogs, I will be describing my experience working on these tools. Overall I feel that these tools are a great addition to Visual Studio IDE and will enhance developer productivity.

Related Posts on Visual Studio 2017 –

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Categories: C#, Visual Studio, Visual Studio 2017