.

All these products. Which one is for me?

There are tons of options for Visual Studio 2008. How do you figure out what's what?

Here are a few handy comparison links:

• Visual Studio 2008 product comparisons: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vs2008/products/cc149003.aspx 
• Team System 2008 comparison matrix: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vsts2008/products/bb991841.aspx 
• Visual Studio Pro vs. Visual Studio Standard comparison: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vs2008/products/bb980920.aspx
• MSDN 2008 side-by-side comparison: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/aa718657.aspx

Of course, if you're doing team development, you'll want to stick with Team Suite with MSDN Premium and Team Foundation Server.

I've joined the ranks of twitterers

snowstormlife

Watch people get splashed (and learn a bit about Team System)

I've created a two-part recording of my Code Camp / SQL Saturday talk on database change management with Team System. In it we take a look at how Team System can help ease the pain of database development and change management.

Why would you want to spend an hour of your life watching these two recordings? Well, if you can answer "Yes" to any of these questions below, you should at least give it a try. (Plus you can see some people get really soaked by waves in Cozumel. That alone is worth watching the first part.)

• Ever make a bunch of changes to your database then lose track of what you’ve changed?
• Frustrated with trying to come up with consistent, “meaningful” test data to test your applications?
• Wish you could unit test your database?
• Ever forget to make a backup copy of your stored procedure before you made that one line change (that happens to crash the system)?
• Tired of feeling like you’re not part of the team?

Part 1 sets the stage, as I put my production database schema into Team Foundation Server for version control and create a local sandbox database. Then I make a bunch of changes to tables and stored procedures using some of the cool features in the Database Edition.

In Part 2 I demonstrate a number of features that allow me to see what's changed in my schema, then I use the data generation tools to create some test data and publish it to my sandbox database. I follow that by creating and running a unit test for one of my stored procedures.

Here's Part 1 (31:09)

And here's Part 2 (35:29)

What do you think?

[Update: I've posted the files for parts 1 and 2 in my Downloads area: http://snowstormlife.com/files/. Feel free to download and view offline later.]

I don't think I'll live to see the day this finishes. . .

Hope I don't have to reboot anytime soon. :)

Goodbye Spring, Hello Summer!

Well, that was a quick spring. By the looks of things we're already into summer. It's not even 1PM and we're already over 80 and climbing. Yesterday we had our first batch of the typical afternoon thundershowers. . . [update: and here we are at around 5PM. Yeah, summertime.]