I try to keep the development environment I have on my laptop up to date with the latest software that Microsoft has to offer. This allows me to play with the new technology and learn, as I often get asked questions by customers about this new technology. All the older software I have in virtual machines. I recently updated my development environment to include Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Beta and SQL Server 2008 RC0, and this is my story…

The install of Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Beta and SQL Server 2008 RC0 was pretty painless, if a little lengthy, but I was initially surprised to find that the Database Professionals bit of Visual Studio 2008 didn’t seem to support support SQL Server 2008. When I tried to create a new SQL Server 2005 database project, or open an existing one I just got this not very useful error (I don’t have SQL Server 2005 installed at all):

Thinking about it, it’s obvious that Microsoft released Visual Studio 2008 before SQL Server 2008, so I was going to need an update for Visual Studio 2008 to support SQL Server 2008. A short search later I came across a blog post from Brian Spann that told me what I needed to know. So off I went and downloaded Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition GDR. I’m not sure, but my guess is that eventually this might be incorporated into SP1. Can anyone confirm this?

So, happy in the knowledge that SQL Server 2008 should now work I loaded up a solution containing an existing SQL Server 2005 database project. I was again surprised when the Project Conversion Wizard popped up. Fine, I thought, I just need to upgrade the database project to a new format. Unfortunately it wasn’t that easy as running through the wizard and clicking Finish just presented this error:

Frustrating, I had to create a new project. There’s obviously a bit more work to do on the update, but don’t say I didn’t warn you!