Visual Studio is 21 years old ! Hooray (said no-one, ever), it can now legally consume alcohol in most places on the planet.
As you will know by now, I\’m a data guy – plain and simple. I\’ve tried to use Visual Studio since I bought the Student Edition of Visual Studio 6.0, but somehow we\’ve never clicked, if you\’ll pardon the pun.
It\’s not that I\’m stupid, or that the software is inherently badly designed – 21 years is a long time for any one name to stick around (Question: if VSTS has been renamed to Azure DevOps, is the writing on the wall for the Visual Studio brand ?)
It\’s just that we don\’t get on. If there\’s someone in your workplace that you can\’t explain why you don\’t like, you can make a good show of being pleasant to them and in front of others while secretly hoping that your paths don\’t cross that often because it\’s always awkward and frustrating.
With Visual Studio, though, we *have* to spend time together ☹. Specifically because someone thought that data-based processes like ETL, cube design and report authoring would be a good fit for software that most people can\’t even get to MsgBox \”Hello World!\”, and then set about making that nightmare a reality.
Permit me to step back in time a bit…. Getting a bit misty eyed with nostalgia…
Back in the day, there was *one* way to get data out of / into SQLServer – the Bulk Copy Utility, or bcp.exe.
Actually, there were a few ways, but you used them at your peril. bcp was the only one you could trust. In fact, it was so successful, it\’s still around in SQL 2017….
SQL Server 7.0 brought us Data Transformation Services, an add-in to SQL Server Enterprise Manager that you got by default, and then everyone started talking ETL. (Question: Does anyone remember what people used for Reports back in 1997 ? Was it Crystal Reports ?)
It was accessed from here:
And looked like this:
Simples, no ? Actually, this kind of basic functionality is still in SQL Server Management Studio – if you\’ve create a maintenance plan, you\’ve used the great-great-great-great-great-grandchild of the original DTS…
See that ? Dts… lovely…. 🙂
OK, so, moving on, SQL 2000 didn\’t change much, to be honest. Then next step was SQL 2008 Business Intelligence Development Studio, (or BIDS for short)….
BIDS was an optional install from the source media for SQL 2005 client tools, and brought the design surfaces for Reporting Services, Analysis Services, and the newly labelled Integration Services into one place. Seems fair…
And then it all started to go a bit wrong, didn\’t it, Microsoft ? Yes, I\’m looking at you….
The successor to BIDS was SQL Server Data Tools – a new, stand-alone product, outside of the SQL Server installation media, that was completely independent of the database engine. There was much rejoicing when Juneau (the codename for what was to be SSDT) was shown in 2010, and as a stand-alone it was pretty awesome. The installer dropped a Visual Studio Shell to host the software, but that was OK, we were all friends back then.
By December 2011, though, cracks had started to show. Bill Gibson at Microsoft had to publish an article when people complained that SSDT was missing from Visual Studio after running the installer.
Then SSDT went to regular releases, meaning you had to go through all this pain again every time a new version came out. At this point, I kinda stopped using it, because other work, but recently I\’ve had to go back to SSDT, and I have to say, I\’m not impressed.
I chose this time to rip out all my previous versions of Visual Studio, be they full-fat or integrated shell, an install a shiny new version, Visual Studio 2017. I\’d heard it had some extra data bits in it, like Azure, Analytics, Data Science and Python – right up my modern street !
Imagine my joy when I saw this in the Visual Studio installer options:
Happy-happy-joy-joy, running-man dance, all that stuff !!! YES !! SSDT is now an option to install as part of the Data Storage And Processing workload !
Could this be the nirvana I had been seeking ? SSDT fully integrated into Visual Studio Enterprise ? The ability to create database projects *and* integration services projects delivered out-of-the-box with no additional installs required ?
No.
Despite the installer saying it will install SSDT, you still have to download the installer if you want to use any of the data tools and then tell it to talk to Visual Studio…..
What\’s also slightly irksome is that in that same installer as the options for iOS, Android, and other mobile platforms, Azure, Python, and a whole host of things that Developers care about, but if Microsoft are going to force data professionals into the Visual Studio world (for ETL *and* analytics), then they should at least make the experience less infuriating.
I\’m kind hoping that the tools team behind the excellent VS Code and SQL Operations Studio will be turning their eye to SSDT soon – the time is right for a cross-platform SSDT as a majestic stand-alone again, and I\’ll be pushing all the people I know to make this happen.
Actually, that\’s just 2 people.
And I don\’t really know them.
Or have any influence over what they do….
And I know I can get Visual Studio on a non-windows platform.
But that doesn\’t mean we can now get on….
Back soon….
The Modern Dataist 