Visual Studio 2010 has new feature to invoke T-SQL Editor inside its IDE itself.

So unlike in VS 2008 and other previous Visual Studio versions where you had to open SQL Server Management Studio to run the T-SQL queries, VS 2010 provides this feature which comes handly when you need to interact with database without leaving your Visusl Studio IDE.

You can access it through Data menu by choosing Transact-SQL Editor option. It offers connectivity only with SQL Server 2008 only, in order to open T-SQL Editor.

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Once the T-SQL Editor is open it also shows the SQL related toolbar on the top, as shown marked in RED color on top-left, and allows you to work with SQL 2008 Databases without leaving the VS 2010 IDE.

In any of the Visual Studio IDE, VS 2002 until VS 2008 each .cs or any other file was/is displayed in the form of a separate code-editor tab, and so at some point in time it was very common to have multiple files open in various code-editor tabs.

The problem comes when you want to close these tabs and it is and has been a troublesome process as in these versions of VS 2002 – VS 2008 there is a common closing tab on the right-hand-side so you have to go to that common closing button for each tab as shown in the screenshot below.

common closing button for all the tabs

Click on the image caption link to see larger view

In VS 2010 this behavior is changed and each tab has its own closing button, this makes it more simple and easy to use. Notice in the image below that each tab has its own closing button and there is no common closing button on the right-hand-side like in VS 2008 or any of the previous version of Visual Studio.

Visual Studio 2010 is backward compatible with Visual Studio 2008, and it allows upgrading Visual Studio 2008 solution/projects to VS 2010 with the help of upgrade wizard.

Any VS 2010 solution/project or the one which you upgraded from VS 2008 to VS 2010 cannot be re-opened in VS 2008. If you try to do so you will receive an error that you can’t open a solution or project which is created with newer version of this application

VS 2010 – Splash Screen

November 6th, 2009 | Posted by Vidya Vrat in Visual Studio - (0 Comments)

This is how splash screen looks in Visual Studio 2010.

Microsoft has launched its new search engine which will replace live.com.

Microsoft has recently launched the development tool support for Windows Cloud Computing – Windows Azure.

Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio; extend Visual Studio to enable the creation, building, debugging, running and packaging of scalable services on Windows Azure.

Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio includes:

*C# and VB Project templates for building Cloud Services
*Integration with the Development Fabric and Development Storage services
*Debugging Cloud Service Roles running in the Development Fabric
*Building and packaging of Cloud Service Packages
*Browsing to the Azure Services Developer Portal
*Role configuration
*SSL Certificate selection

Download here:
Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio

Microsoft published the 1st CTP of VS201 and .NET 4.0 on 26-Oct-2008.

As of now its availavle in the form of virtual image only,follow the link below to download.

Download Vs2010 and .NET 4.0 CTP

Before you begin with download, lets have look at:

System Requirements
* Supported Operating Systems: Windows Server 2003; Windows Server 2008; Windows Vista; Windows XP
* Minimum 75 GB available HDD space
* The host computer must have a minimum of 2 GB RAM, with 1 GB allocated to the host operating system and 1 GB allocated to the VPC.
* We recommend that the host computer CPU be at least a Core Duo 2 GHz processor.
Service Pack 1 of Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 is required to access the VPC.

If you have tried to install SP1 for Visual Studio 2008 and have experienced failure then follow the steps as mentioned below:

These steps applies to if you have Visual Studio 2008 alone, or on the top of some Beta components of SQL Server and Visual Studio 2008.

Tricks before you begin installation:
1- Disable Automatic updates.
2- Disable any of the Anti-virus, spyware etc.
3- Set Windows Firewall to Off.
4- Keep the VS 2008 Installation media ready.

Step -1: Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack Preparation Tool

Step -2: Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1

In this step-2, you may experience that at the end of installation wizard “SQL Publishing Wizard 1.3” is running forever, if you face the same then cancel the setup, and it will show you the finish dialog. Now you can successfully perform Step-3.

Step -3: Microsoft Silverlight Tools Beta 2 for Visual Studio 2008

Once these steps are performed then you can go to Visual Studio –> Help menu –> About Visual Studio, and you will see that SP1 is installed along with SilverLight as show in the figure below. Also it will install all the updates during the installaion procedure.

The first time you open a Visual Studio 2005 website, you’ll be asked if you want to adjust it to use ASP.NET 3.5

If you choose Yes, the web.config file will be modified to target .NET 3.5. If you choose No, your website will continue targeting ASP.NET 2.0, but you can modify this detail at any time by choosing Website’s Start Options. Either way, you won’t be asked again, because your preference is recorded in the hidden solution file that’s stored in a user-specific Visual Studio directory.

The Service Pack1 Beta is available for the .NET Framework 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008. The SP1 comes with new features.

Lets have look here for features and download:

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5
Service pack 1 Beta

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 Beta