New! Teradata Developer Tools for Visual Studio

We are pleased to announce general availability of the Teradata Developer Tools for Visual Studio.
This product may be integrated with Visual Studio 2010 or 2012 and can be downloaded from the following locations:

    English version
    Japanese version

Alternatively, you can use the Manage Extensions item on the Tools menu in Visual Studio to download it directly from within Visual Studio.

Overview

The initial release of the Teradata Developer Tools for Visual Studio contains a Teradata Query tool. This extension allows you to open custom Editor windows that can be used to compose SQL queries for the Teradata Database and execute those queries using the .NET Data Provider for Teradata.

It also provides a History window to record, and reuse, the queries that you execute. The history data is stored in an SQLServerCE database that is stored locally on your system.

The following image shows an example of the tool within Visual Studio:

Integration with Visual Studio

• A Teradata menu is added to the main menu bar
• An optional Teradata Toolbar can be displayed
• An optional Teradata History tool window can be displayed
• A Teradata Developer Tools page is added to the Options dialog
• A Teradata SQL page is added under the Text Editor page in Options
• A Teradata Query Editor item is added to the Show Settings for List box on the Fonts and colors page in Options
• Many of the standard Visual Studio commands will also work within the Query Editor window.
  For example: Find, Replace, Indent, Comment, Uppercase, Lowercase, Bookmark, etc.
• The menus and toolbars can be customized using the standard Tools, Customize menu

Editor functionality

• Color coding indicates Keywords, Functions, Strings, Comments, etc.
• Intellisense displays Database, Table, View, Alias, Column and Built-in Function names
• Quick-Info displays prototypes and descriptions for Built-in Functions
• Outlining: Collapsible sections that may start and end mid-line
• Brace Matching for Parens, Quotes, Comment delimiters and Keyword pairs
• "One-click" Highlighting of a logical block of code

Query execution

• Execute an individual statement
• Sequentially execute multiple statements
• Execute part of a query by highlighting it before executing
• Check the validity of a statement. This returns meta-data describing the result columns if the statement is valid
• Create a UDF using source code that is stored on your local system.
  You will be prompted for the source files when they are required.

Using your SQL Assistant history

The information stored in the History file is the same as that stored by SQL Assistant.
SQL Assistant stores its history in a Microsoft Access database: SQLHistory.mdb
The Teradata Developer Tool stores its history in a SQLServerCE database: SQLHistory.sdf

If you would like to use your existing history from SQL Assistant you can download the attached HistoryConverter tool. Simply unzip the file into a directory of your choice. Note that it assumes that you have all the required pre-requisites. If you have both SQL Assistant and the Teradata Developer Tools for Visual Studio installed then you will already have those pre-requisites.

This tool will allow you to perform any of the following functions:

• Convert an SQL Assistant History file to the format required by the Developer Tools
• Convert a Developer Tools History file to the format required by SQL Assistant
• Merge 2 history files [of any/mixed type] into a single file of either type
• Compress a history file to reclaim the space used by deleted rows

Conclusion

This tool will allow you to develop the SQL required for your applications without leaving the Visual Studio environment. However it should be noted that the tool is not a replacement for SQL Assistant or Teradata Studio. These other tools have far more functionality than the Teradata Developer Tools.