I was thinking of the minimum software I can install on my new dev machine. Has anyone tried codeing with just VS2010/Linqpad?
The SQL Server is on another machine so then I would only need SSMS.. but then I think linqpad could replace that + help me with Linq queries..
But the problem seems to be I won't be able to CREATE SQL USERS with SSMS and I may need to do thatfrom time to time..
Any thoughts ?
Personally I'd always install SQL Management Studio as it's the defacto tool for managing SQL Server.
AFAIK you can't issue arbitary SQL commands using VS2010 and thus you can't create users - that is unless you use VS2010 to write an app to issue the commands which is trivial but I'd say ultimately pointless.
I would install SQL Server client tools - you would at least then get SSMS and SQLCMD. No need for SQL Server itself (or even SSIS - you can still use BIDS to write packages, but you have to run them interactively).
LINQPad lets you run SQL queries as well as LINQ queries - so you can manage without SSMS if you're happy to do things purely via SQL.
Of course, for some things SSMS is easier than writing SQL. And on a dev box you'll probably want SQL Profiler, too (for this reason, it's a good idea to install the management tools that come with the full edition of SQL Server rather than relying on the SQL Express tools).