VSTS Dev + MSDN = VSTS DBPro...and vice versa

Microsoft announced on Monday that if you have Visual Studio Team System for Developers and an  MSDN subscription you will be able to download and install the Visual Studio Team System for Database Professionals at NO ADDITIONAL COST.

If you are a DB Pro user with MSDN, you now get the Developer edition!

[UPDATE - 03-Oct-2008] Gert Drapers of the DB Pro Team has posted additional information on this new benefit.  You can find his post here.  There is also a FAQ on MSDN here.

Since Visual Studio 2010 has merged these 2 editions, they felt that they could provide the same value to current (VS 2005, VS 2008) MSDN subscribers.

This is great!  I have a lot of clients that have balked at using the features in DB Pro because they already had Developer and couldn't justify the additional cost.  They lost out on some great features because of this.  Now they can deploy DB Pro to all of their Devs that also do database work and get their entire development process under a single umbrella with version control, work item tracking and automated builds.

Another cool thing that you may not have known; All of the Visual Studio Editions install into a single Visual Studio IDE.  That means that if you have VSTS Dev installed and then install DB Pro, you don't see another icon in the Start menu and you don't have a second, unneeded, full install of the Visual Studio files on your drive wasting space.  The DB Pro just plugs in to your existing installation and "lights up" the additional features.  I've noticed that this isn't a widely know topic so I thought I'd bring it up.

The download is available as of Wednesday, 1-Oct-2008 on your MSDN downloads page.

Major TFS Power Tools Release Is Coming

Brian Harry has posted a "teaser" on his blog outlining the next TFS Power Tools release.  There is some major new, cool and useful functionality being dropped.  They are looking at a late October 2008 timeframe.

This release has some excellent, new collaboration tools like integration with Live Messenger and Team Member based querying.  They have also written extension points that allow you to hook in your favorite IM program.

To make life even easier for those folks that work in a mixed environment (.Net, Java, PHP, etc) they have done some excellent Shell Integration.

I can't do half as good a job explaining this as Brian, so go and read his post for all the new goodness.

http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/archive/2008/10/01/preview-of-the-next-tfs-power-tools-release.aspx

- Steve