Microsoft Database project requires Visual studio 2010 premium or higher? Are there any open source free ones?

Question

Hello, I need to know wether or not to buy the VS 2010 premium or not. I have the Visual StudioTeam System 2008 Database Edition working on my own version of vs 2008 team suite. My coworkers only have VS2008 professional. We are moving to VS2010 now. We do not have MSDN licenses for our company right now. We are looking to buy just the VS2010 no MSDN. It is very pricey to get 6 licences of VS2010 premium. We need to get our database into source control. We are currently email scripts around, and it very difficult to keep track off. Are there any non-microsoft solutions that would be the same features and be free?

Answer 1

I am not sure if I understand the question, but Visual SVN + Tortoise works really well with VS2008.

Answer 2

For database projects you definitely need what they call a "data dude" (Database Edition) or Team System (for 2008).

For 2010 it's either Premium or Ultimate.

Another option would be to move database development into the main (non-database project) by using some ORM tool. Either Linq2Sql, Entity Framework or a third party solution like nHibernate.

Answer 3

How much time do you lose on your projects emailing data model changes around? How much extra time does the team spend debugging because of using that process? If you add up all that time, look at what could have been built instead and general developer happiness; maybe the price for VS Premium isn't so bad.

I'm just saying its easy to be blown away by sticker shock on tools until you add up all the lost time that could have been going to money making product development.

Answer 4

Does the entire team need the Premium functionality? Contrary to the title of your question, VS2010 Professional does include the Database Project. What you don't get is schema compare, data compare, data generator, unit testing, refactoring, and static code analysis. So one compromise option would be to get one Premium for the person who needs the above tools, and leave everyone else with Professional?