Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2010 Unleashed

Using Database Projects

Up to this point, we have discussed the use of the Visual Database Tools outside the context of a Visual Studio solution/project. Now let’s investigate the role of the Database project type. Database projects in Visual Studio are used to manage the development and deployment of databases. essentially an offline version of a database. It mirrors a database through a set of .SQL files that contain the schema and object definitions for things such as tables, indexes, and stored procedures. With database projects, Visual Studio enables an end-to-end database development workflow that typically goes something like this:

• The DBA, who is typically the only person on a project team with access to the production database, uses ...