VistaDB 3 is integrated tightly into the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 environments. VistaDB 3 is a fully compliant ADO.NET 2.0 provider factory. Native support for the Server Explorer lets you connect to and use VistaDB databases as you would Microsoft SQL Server, including visual query creation inside the Visual Studio IDE.
Full support for ADO.NET Provider Factories also means you can write generic data access code and change the connection string to load VistaDB or SQL Server at runtime for a single application build that supports multiple backend data stores.
Full support for the Server Explorer also includes x64 systems! Even though Visual Studio is a 32 bit app you can still use our 64 bit provider on 64 bit Windows. The VistaDB Engine will JIT to 64 bit when not hosted under a 32 bit process to allow you to take advantage of increased memory limits. While running under Visual Studio the engine runs in 32 bit mode.
You can create databases, alter their schema, indexes and more directly inside Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008. This allows you to make quicker edits directly within your development environment.
Create a new database while building a connection
Adding a data connection within Visual Studio also allows you to create a new database at the same time you make the connection in the Server Explorer.
Alter tables within Visual Studio
The Visual Studio IDE can also alter UDF, and TSQL Stored Procedures directly within the Server Explorer window.
Create T-SQL Stored Procedures within Visual Studio
T-SQL Stored Procedures can be visually edited
Launch the VistaDB Data Builder from Visual Studio
From the Server Explorer you may right click the database and select Edit Database to have the VistaDB Data Builder automatically launch and open your database in a single step. This makes for a much faster workflow from the development tool to your database admin tool when you need it.
Please note that Visual Studio Express editions do NOT allow third party add ins to be loaded. This is a limitation imposed by Microsoft. You can still use the Data Builder, and write code to load / access the database. You will not be able to use the integrated Server Explorer plug-in.
You can still write code to use the VistaDB database engine, but you lose the Server Explorer, visual query designer and strongly typed dataset generation capabilities. The VistaDB Express product will work with Visual Studio Express since neither of them contain the visual designers.