Updated: July 10, 2020 (January 9, 2012)

SQL Server Development Enhancements

Wes Miller analyzes and writes about Microsoft’s security, identity management, and systems management technologies. Before joining Directions on Microsoft, Wes... more

SQL Server 2012 appears to be the most significant SQL Server release for application developers since SQL Server 2005. Among many improvements for developers, it provides a simpler, unified development environment for all database and BI tasks; a new, more approachable BI stack; and new full-text search functionality that will benefit developers whose applications store documents and other kinds of unstructured data in SQL Server databases. However, the new version delivers a small number of changes that could break existing applications.

Unified Development Experience

For developers, SQL Server 2012 delivers a stand-alone environment, SQL Server Data Tools and a set of plug-ins for Visual Studio (VS) 2010. The Data Tools handle all SQL Server 2012 development tasks. Previous versions of SQL Server have provided more than one development environment for SQL Server developers, including the following:

Visual Studio (VS 2008 shipped a Database edition targeted exclusively at database

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