Now available: Power Tools for Team Edition for Database Professionals with Service Release 1

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You can now download the first release of power tools for Team Edition for Database Professionals.

By installing the power tools, you gain the ability to perform the following tasks:

·         Use database refactoring to update files automatically when you want to:

o   Move a database object to a different schema

o   Disambiguate references to database objects by fully qualifying their names

o   Expand wildcard references to explicitly list columns

o   Generate scripts from your refactoring log that will help preserve the intent of your refactoring operations. For example, you can create a script that will rename a column, instead of dropping the column with the old name and creating an empty column with the new name.

·         Compare schemas and data at a command prompt

·         Specify regular expressions and data bound columns more easily

·         Automatically fill a table with reference data by using a new sequential data bound generator (see below)

·         Organize your database project by schema or by database object type without using the database project wizard

·         View the objects that reference or are referenced by a database object

·         Identify common problems in Transact-SQL (T-SQL) code by performing static code analysis

·         Develop Visual Studio add-ins that integrate with Schema View

You can find more information and a link to download the English version of the release at the Download Center on the Microsoft Web site. Before you install the power tools, you must first install Service Release 1 for Team Edition for Database Professionals.

To immediately download the update, you can click this link to the Microsoft Web site.

 

 

 

Sequential Data Bound Generator

In a previous post, I talked about the ways in which you can manage reference data in your test environment. One of the approaches that I mentioned was to use a new data generator called the sequential data bound generator. This generator returns the records in the order that you specify in the query and, therefore, keeps the data in each row together.

You can easily use this generator if you already know how to create data generation plans and use data generators. For an overview of how to generate te data in Team Edition for Database Professionals, see LINK.In the Column Details window, click Sequential Data Bound Generator in the Generator field. When a Browse button (‘…’) appears in the right-most cell of that row in the grid, you click that button to start the Data Generator Wizard. In that wizard, you specify the database connection that corresponds to the data source from which you want to retrieve the reference data. Then you type the T-SQL statement that returns the reference data. For example, you would type SELECT * FROM [Production].[UnitMeasure] to generate reference data for the Production.UnitMeasure table in the AdventureWorks sample database.

Unfortunately, you cannot use the same connection string for different columns in the same table. You must specify the connection again and retype (or copy and paste) the SELECT statement for each column in your reference table.

Finally, you should update the Rows to Insert field to match the number of rows that your SELECT statement returns. If you specify more rows to insert than what the SELECT statement returns, the sequence of generated data will repeat. For example, your SELECT statement might return three rows, “Red”, “Green”, and “Blue”. If you specify five rows to insert, your reference data would consist of “Red”, “Green”, “Blue”, “Red”, “Green”.

In my next post, I will take a closer look at some of the other power tools that this release includes.

-Steven

 

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