Data Dude Day – After spending some quality time with VSTS Database Professional Edition yesterday I have to say, it’s that time, it’s Data Dude Time. - Greg's Cool [Insert Clever Name] of the Day

Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Data Dude Day – After spending some quality time with VSTS Database Professional Edition yesterday I have to say, it’s that time, it’s Data Dude Time.

Yesterday I had the chance to go to a local Microsoft hosted VSTS Database Professional workshop (Visual Studio Team System for Database Professionals Workshop) and I have to say, I believe it’s time. With the latest GDR release (I think of it as a “v2.5” release of Data Dude) the product is at a point where I think it’s time I start “really” using it.

As you can see below I’ve been following Data Dude, aka Database Edition, aka Team Edition for Database Professionals, for a while now. But I’ve never gotten to the point where I could take the plunge. There were just too many things in the way, both in product maturity, development workflow and learning curve.

After today I believe I’ve seen that the product maturity issue is solved and the rest of the problems are all in my head (well dugh! ;)

The workshop walked us through using Data Dude via in a simple real world workflow (as much as you can in 6 hours, with the first 2 1/2 being an into to TFS/ work items, etc). How to create the database project, fill it, check it in and most importantly how manage the life cycle of the database. How to build the initial script, how to build a diff script for future releases, how to leverage source control to manage the life cycle of the database, how to unit test it, etc.

I walked away with a feeling that I am now beginning to grok it. The thing is that we all manage our SQL scripts today. We all have our different ways to building our update/diff scripts, for building our DB create scripts, for version controlling these scripts/objects/etc, right? And everyone’s is different. I see Data Dude leveling the playing field a little and setting a common baseline for this so very common work. Why are we reinventing this stilly wheel? I’m done and it’s time for change.

This week or next I’m going to have to create a DB project (actually two) load it up and see if I can roll with this this Sprint (which started last week). Worse case I can at least begin playing with it, do a dry run this Sprint and plan on moving to it next.

My biggest gripe with Data Dude? Diagrams, or lack there of. When I design and work with database tables, I like to see them diagrammed. I like to see their relationships. This is critical for me. And the fact that Data Dude doesn’t have that capability will hamper my usage of it. Sure I can use Management Studio, Visio, ERWin, etc, but I WANT to stay in Visual Studio. Any time I have to switch out of VS means a context switch and those cost. And it’s not like VS doesn’t have diagrams for many other things, right? Give me table/relationship diagrams (again think Visio or Management Studio, etc) and I will be a very happy camper…

I also need to R&D into if I can use the schema compare in Team Build. I want a nightly diff/upgrade script, comparing the “Prod” DB project with the “Dev” branch and generating the update script, that I can use for our database unit/integration testing. While I can do that manually, I want it automated and part of a CI and nightly build. I love R&D… :)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...: There are to ways that I have found to generate the compare script.

1.) When you do a deploy it create a sql script for you. I think it is in the sql directory under your project. Not at a dev machine right now to check.

2.) Use the VSTSDB power tools that includes the ability to do a schema compare with msbuild like you normally would deploy during an automated build.
http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=73ba5038-8e37-4c8e-812b-db14ede2c354&displaylang=en; Thu Mar 05, 08:17:00 AM PST
Greg said...: I knew about #1 but not about (or forgot about) #2...

Thanks Justin!; Thu Mar 05, 08:19:00 AM PST
Unknown said...: It's great to hear that Data Dude is just about ready for prime time. How does the announcemet of Oracle support weigh into this sentiment? I can't imagine that KPMG doesn't have at least a little work going on in Oracle.; Tue Mar 10, 02:09:00 PM PDT
Greg said...: @Daniel

Yes, and no. Yes, the GDR update to decouple the code into Providers was huge in my eyes. The fact that now that they can respond to changes to SQL Server without a new "major"/SP release was big.

But as for Oracle/DB2 my Practice doesn't use either, so that really didn't weight in on much on my thoughts (except that the Database Provider code enabled that new kind of functionality ... ;); Tue Mar 10, 02:16:00 PM PDT