Getting SQL Server 2008 database projects in VS 2008 SP1

So, it seems Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio 2008 adds some support for SQL Server 2008, in that you can now connect and browse SQL Server 2008 servers in the Server Explorer. This’ll let you do cool stuff like generate code with LINQ to SQL, but there’s one important feature missing:

No SQL Server 2008 datbase project template in Visual Studio 2008 SP1

Where’s the SQL Server 2008 database project template?

If you and try to create a SQL 2000 or 2005 project, Visual Studio will ask for a local SQL Server 2005 instance:

There’s no way around this — “design-time validation” cannot be disabled, and SQL Server 2008 isn’t supported yet. In other words, unless you have SQL Server 2005 installed, you cannot open or create Visual Studio database projects at all. I was pretty dismayed to discover this — all I wanted was a place to chuck some .sql database migrations inside a solution!

However, you can download a temporary fix. Grab the VSTS 2008 Database Edition GDR August CTP. I have no idea what GDR stands for, but it’ll solve all your problems by adding new project types that don’t require a local SQL Server instance at all:

SQL Server 2008 database projects from VSTS Database Edition GDR CTP

The final release is due out this Spring.

Generating documentation with Doxygen

A few days ago, I had my first experience with Doxygen, an open-source documentation generator similar to Javadoc.

After a few hours of documenting my code to a satisfactory level, I had a very professional-looking set of HTML documentation. At work the next day, I used Doxygen to generate code for a Visual C# class library, which had been documented with XML comments.

Doxygen supports most C-derived programming languages including C, C++, Java and C#. It also allows you to define custom pages and sections; you are not limited to code documentation.

Documenting a method is very simple:

/// @brief Calculate the sum of two values.////// Adds the two values together and returns their sum.////// @param[in] aa The first value./// @param[in] bb The second value.////// @return The sum of both values.////// @note This method is deprecated!////// @see operator+()int add(int aa, int bb);

A full list of Doxygen commands is available.