Carly Meichen

7 March 2017

3 Comments

Announcing Redgate Data Tools in Visual Studio 2017

Visual Studio 2017 is released today, and its new features like Live Unit Testing and configurable code style rules have already been grabbing the headlines. But inside the Visual Studio 2017 installer, another big surprise awaits: Redgate Data Tools.

Redgate Data Tools are inside the Visual Studio Enterprise 2017 installer

We’ve partnered with Microsoft so Visual Studio Enterprise subscribers can install ReadyRoll Core, SQL Prompt Core, and SQL Search as part of the Data storage and processing workload, enabling users to extend DevOps processes to SQL Server and Azure SQL databases, and increase productivity when working with SQL.

I’m excited about this because it’s a sign of how important database DevOps is becoming. DevOps is now mainstream and teams want to adopt processes like continuous integration and continuous deployment to deliver value more frequently.

Organizations all over are thinking practically about how to adopt a DevOps culture, and by including Redgate Data Tools in Visual Studio Enterprise, Microsoft are offering a complete solution to support this for both the application and the database.

While the DevOps culture, processes, and tools have come a long way in recent years for application development and deployment, the database has been a common blocker for organizations because of its unique requirements, and different processes to that of the application. The need to preserve production data can’t be overlooked, for example.

ReadyRoll Core lets users develop, source control, and safely automate deployments of database changes alongside application changes in Visual Studio, Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) and Team Foundation Server (TFS). This means the same tools used for the application can be extended to the database, and a single source of truth for teams can be established. The database will no longer be the bottleneck to continuously delivering value.

SQL Prompt Core offers advanced, IntelliSense-style code completion in Visual Studio Enterprise, allowing development teams to be more productive when writing and editing SQL. SQL Prompt Core autocompletes database and system objects and keywords, suggests JOIN conditions based on Foreign Key relationships or column similarities as you type, and also lets you expand wildcards to pick just the columns you need.

ReadyRoll Core and SQL Prompt Core in Visual Studio Enterprise 2017

SQL Search is available in all editions of Visual Studio 2017 – that’s Community, Pro, and Enterprise. To date, SQL Search has been a free extension exclusively for SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), but now users can speed up database development by searching and exploring across SQL databases in Visual Studio 2017, as well as SSMS. SQL Search is such a popular Redgate tool, and we’re really excited to share this with even more developers.

SQL Search in Visual Studio 2017

If you’re not a Visual Studio Enterprise user, fear not. Pro editions of the tools support Visual Studio 2017 and earlier, and 28-day free trials are available from our website.

ReadyRoll Pro gives you even more precise and granular control over database deployments, and gives you the best of both migrations- and state-based approaches.

SQL Prompt Pro lets you format SQL into a standardized layout, create and share snippets, and offers a host of other productivity and collaboration features to make working with SQL effortless. SQL Prompt Pro supports SSMS too.

Give Visual Studio 2017 a try, and select the Data storage and processing workload to install the Redgate Data Tools.

Find out more about Redgate Data Tools.