VistaDB 3.5 includes a number of enchancements to the core tools from the 4.x development work.
Visual Studio Designer - This designer has a new name (and path). It is actually most of the new designer from the 4.x line. We are making a lot of changes to the internal architecture to get ready for client / server and Entity Framework support from a single designer. The new install path is the InstallDir\VisualStudio to reflect that a single dll is used for all versions of Visual Studio. The dll has also been renamed to VistaDB.vsdesigner.dll.
Visual Studio Server Explorer - Displays the name of the database rather than "VistaDB Database" in the explorer tree. Existing entries must be removed and re-added in order to gain new naming.
Visual Studio Database Template - Add new item templates for vdb3 database. We will add an asp.net version to include the role providers pre-populated in the database. There is no need to migrate from one format to another as the VistaDB.Web.Dll has been rewritten to only use the SQL Interfaces (but did not make it into this release). We now use the same schema as the SQL Server membership provider and it should make upsizing to SQL Server easier. Once you add the item template into your project a Server Explorer entry is made for you, and an app.config with the database factory entries just in case you need them. When adding a new template to a project it will also automatically make the correct app.config or web.config entries for the engines, and in the case of the web project it will also copy the dll from the GAC to your bin folder to make an easier deployment.
Data Builder UI Changes - New launch screen showing a cached list of recent stories from our Blog. We will continue to update this over time (maximum of once ever 4 hours). You may uncheck the update box to prevent it from checking for a new landing page. The launch page also shows the most recent databases for quick reload of the files. New menu items in Data Builder include the following:
Online Samples - The
samples / tutorials main starting area on the website (under construction).
Check for Updates - Transmits your current Build information only to the server and asks for the latest update. If an update is available you will be prompted and the Account Manager site will be launched for you to login and download. Trial users will not be able to download later builds unless they upgrade to a subscription.
Query Plans - have been removed. They were really nothing more than query guesses, and almost always inaccurate as to what was really happening in the engine. Once we get real plans working they will return.
Clear the Log on execute (option). This will prevent the log from growing long after multiple runs and make it very easy to see what was just executed only.
DBASampleTool - The old Data Builder source (renamed DBASampleTool) has source included for all full licenses so you may build a quick admin tool for your applications. We have cleaned this up to remove all branding references, and make it easier to ship it as your own. Open the DBA Sample Tool project and change the company information, disable any features you don't want to ship, etc. This sample makes it easier than ever to quickly build a DBA tool for your application.
Help files - have been updated, and a few new sample were promoted to the 3.x install as well. We will continue to evaluate these and add more as we can over time. A few samples were included from the forums as well.
Install Changes - You will also notice a slightly longer install period due to the inclusion of the Visual Studio templates. We have to call Visual Studio with the template entries for it to process and this takes a while to run (approx 30 seconds). If you have 2008 and 2005 installed you will have to wait for both of them to load the templates. We have made a change in Build 83 to not check your locale. We now tell Visual Studio to load the templates into whatever locale it thinks it is running.
Updates to Engine
There are also a number of updates to the VistaDB engine from the last 3.4 trial. We continue to release updates and improve the quality of VistaDB, thank you to all of our users for your continued support.
As always if you encounter any problems or have questions we would like to know. Please visit our forums and post your questions.
NOTE:
Post release I have an update from a user who has a French OS and English Visual Studio that a crash is occurs at the end of install for the Visual Studio plugins and templates. Don't kill the process, just close it. We will get to the bottom of the issue. This has been fixed.
The template install can take some time (5-10 mins). Look at your task manager and you can see that the devenv process is spinning. It is rebuilding its index of the template files. So the more templates you have the longer it can take.
The setup was updated 4/19/2009 at 5 PM (GMT-5) with an updated InstallDesigner.exe. We didn't rev the entire build for this because there were no other changes. The updated Trial will automatically update the previous 3.5 trial as well. See the forum post for more information and a manual download for users with the trial from Friday.
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