Diving into DevOps

Microsoft Adds Database DevOps Tools in VS Enterprise 2017

It's another step in the company's goal of driving DevOps earlier in the development process.

• By John K. Waters
• April 5, 2017

DevOps got some serious attention in the recent release of Microsoft's Visual Studio Enterprise Edition 2017 (VSE17). The Redmond software maker took another step toward its goal of driving DevOps earlier in the development process with, among other improvements, a new integration with tools from Redgate Software.

Previously available as an add-on only, the Redgate Data Tools suite is now included in the VSE17 installer. The tool suite, which includes ReadyRoll Core, SQL Prompt Core and SQL Search, can be installed as part of the data storage and processing workload, which makes it possible for users to extend DevOps processes to SQL Server and Azure SQL databases.

The integration of this group of tools is another acknowledgement of the growing importance of Database DevOps, Redgate product marketing manager Carly Meichen argued in a blog post. "Organizations all over are thinking practically about how to adopt a DevOps culture," she wrote, "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."

By pulling the database into the DevOps conversation, Redgate, and now Microsoft, are making the case for tools like ReadyRoll Core, which extends tools developers already use for applications to the database. That approach establishes a single source of truth for teams and opens the database bottleneck in the continuous delivery process. ReadyRoll Core is designed to allow users to develop, source control, and automate deployments of database changes alongside application changes in Visual Studio, Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS), and Team Foundation Server (TFS).

SQL Prompt Core provides IntelliSense-style code completion capabilities in VSE17, which makes it possible for development teams to be more productive when writing and editing SQL code. The tool autocompletes database and system objects and keywords, suggests JOIN conditions based on Foreign Key relationships or column similarities as the user types, and allows users to expand wildcards to pick just the columns they need.

Until this release, Redgate's popular SQL Search tool had been available as a free extension exclusively for SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). With this integration, it now supports searching and exploring across SQL databases in Visual Studio 2017, as well as SSMS.

Pro editions of these tools support Visual Studio 2017 and earlier, and the company is offering 28-day free trials on its Web site.