The SSDT team is pleased to announce that SQL Server Data Tools - December 2012 is now available for download!

Get it here:

SSDT for Visual Studio 2012: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/jj650015

SSDT for Visual Studio 2010: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/jj650014

What’s New?

Database Unit Testing

We have received an overwhelming amount of feedback that database unit testing is a critical feature for customers, so SSDT- December 2012 adds support for this feature. Database Unit Testing in SSDT will look familiar to many of you as it is based on the equivalent capability in the Visual Studio 2010 DB Pro tools.  Some highlights:

• Installs in Visual Studio 2010 or Visual Studio 2012:
  • Requires Visual Studio Professional or higher edition to support database unit testing functionality.
  • Installs side-by-side with existing Visual Studio 2010 DB Pro tools in Visual Studio Premium and Ultimate editions.
• Supports client-side testing based on MSTest with the same built-in test conditions as DB Pro.
• Allows desktop development and execution of tests as well as execution from the command line or as part of a build on a build server.
• Upgrades existing VS 2010 test projects without change to the database unit test scripts or code.
• Integrates with SSDT SQL Server database projects:
• Automates deployment of the database project on test initialization.
• Generates skeleton test scripts for stored procedures, functions and triggers via SQL Server Object Explorer.
• Applies changes to test scripts when refactoring objects in database projects.    
• Supports custom test conditions (existing custom test conditions need to be modified before they can be used).

Stay tuned for a follow-up post on getting started with SQL Server database unit testing. 

Integration of SSDT Power Tools

The SSDT team started releasing SSDT Power Tools last April as a mechanism to deliver new and experimental features with each release. Since then, the Power Tools have been downloaded over 24,500 times.

We received a great deal of positive feedback on the Power Tools and as a response, this release integrates the functionality previously delivered via Power Tools into the core SSDT product. The advantage of product inclusion is that a separate install will no longer be needed and that features are now fully supported and available to users in all languages. The following features are now included in SSDT's SQL Server Object Explorer:

Projects node adds the equivalent of Schema View to SSDT. You can use this node to browse the logical schema of your project and to edit, refactor, and add new objects. 

Script As support in SSOX enables you to generate Create, Alter, Drop, and Drop and Create-To scripts for objects in your connected database.

DAC actions allow you to perform similar DAC-based tasks in SSDT to those available in SSMS.  You can extract a dacpac from a live database, publish a dacpac to a database, register a database as a DAC, or remove the registration metadata for a database registered as a DAC. These actions are supported for both on-premises SQL Server databases as well as Windows Azure SQL Databases.

We recommend that you uninstall the SSDT Power Tools extension if you had it previously installed.

Updated Data-Tier Application Framework

This release includes the November 2012 release of SQL Server Data-Tier Application Framework (DACFx), which contains several feature enhancements and bug fixes.  You can learn more about the latest release of DACFx here.

Bug fixes

SSDT - December 2012 contains over 50 bug fixes, including fixes for customer-reported issues from SSDT - November 2012 and SSDT Power Tools releases.

Contact Us

If you have any questions or feedback about SSDT, please visit our forum or Microsoft Connect page.  We look forward to hearing from you.