Getting Started with Database Edition

Visual Studio Team System

You can use Visual Studio Team System Database Edition to help manage the development life cycle of your databases as an important part of your application development. You can use Database Edition to implement the concept of an isolated development environment for each database professional. Team members can work on schema-related activities without interfering with other team members or putting the production environment at risk. By managing database change, you can provide better communication and closer coordination among developers of software and databases.

For more information about how Database Edition can help your organization, see this page on the Microsoft Web site: Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition.

Common High-Level Tasks

In the following table, you can find descriptions of common tasks that support this scenario and links to more information about how you can successfully complete those tasks. In addition, you should determine how these tasks best fit with the development methods of your team.

High-Level Task	Supporting Content
Learn how you can manage changes to your database by using Database Edition: You can learn how to use Database Edition to manage your databases and servers as an integrated part of your overall application development. You can also learn how Database Edition integrates with Visual Studio Team System.	Managing Database Change Terminology Overview of Database Edition Architectural Overview of Database Edition
Learn which permissions you need: The specific permissions that you need vary based on what action you want to perform in Database Edition. For example, you need specific permissions to import objects and settings from a database or to deploy updates, but not to create or modify a database project.	Required Permissions in Database Edition
Get hands-on experience: You can complete a series of introductory walkthroughs to learn how you can use Database Edition in your application life cycle. These walkthroughs introduce you to the practices of offline database development, establishing a quality baseline, and performing iterative database development tasks.	Walkthrough: Creating an Isolated Database Development Environment Walkthrough: Establishing a Baseline for the Isolated Development Environment Walkthrough: Performing Iterative Database Development in an Isolated Development Environment
Perform common tasks: As you use Database Edition, you will frequently open a database or server project and specify the information that is required to connect to a database.	How to: Open a Database or Server Project How to: Create a Database Connection
Troubleshooting: You can find information about how to identify and resolve problems that you might encounter when you manage changes to a database or a database server.	Troubleshooting (in Database Edition)

Related Sections

What's New in Database Edition: If you are familiar with older releases of Database Edition, you might compare them with the features that this release offers.
Managing Changes to Databases and Database Servers: By creating a database project or server project, you can put your database or database server under version control and establish a testing baseline. Then you and your team can develop and refine the schema and its objects, build and deploy updates, and then maintain your databases in a production environment.
>Extending the Features of Database Edition: You can define additional types of refactoring, rules for analyzing database code, conditions for testing databases, or ways to automatically generate types of test data.
API Reference for Database Edition: You can look up information about the namespaces, classes, methods, and properties that you use to extend the features of Database Edition.