VS 2005 Refactoring Support for Visual Basic

by | Dec 4, 2005 | Development

IDE support for refactoring is one of the key additions to C# in Visual Studio 2005.  Unfortunately, refactoring did not make it into the IDE for Visual Basic.  In case you missed the announcement, in the end, Microsoft provided a solution for Visual Basic by partnering with a third-party company to provide their add-in, Refactor!, for free.

VB 2005 developers, download Refactor! here!

Installing VS 2005 into a Virtual PC VM

by | Nov 4, 2005 | Development

I’m sure all of you thoroughly read the README of any product before you install it, so you already know this.

It is a pain to install VS 2005 in a Virtual PC due to limitations of Virtual PC itself. If you have a physical DVD, you cannot use it to directly install VS 2005 in the VM. If you mount an ISO file into Virtual PC, you also cannot use it to install VS 2005. Virtual PC 2004 SP1’s mounting capability only extends to 2.2 GB volumes.

Instead, you need 1) CDs, or 2) you need to copy the DVD or ISO to your local hard drive, share the folder into the VM, and install from there. Or, a third option is to mount the ISO with any third party ISO mounting software, share the drive into the VM, and install from the shared drive.

VS 2005 and SQL 2005 Together

by | Nov 4, 2005 | Development

Many developers will want to install SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition and Visual Studio 2005 on the same PC. (Note: This applies to any version of SQL 2005.) If you install SQL 2005 first and choose to install the BI Development Studio, you are actually installing a stripped-down version of Visual Studio 2005 called Visual Studio 2005 Premier Partner Edition.

You’ll find when you run the Visual Studio 2005 install that you are unable to change the install path. The help will tell you it’s due to dependencies on VS 2005 Premier Partner Edition, but doesn’t indicate how or where you got that. Now you know!

It’s also interesting to note that SQL 2005 includes no less than three variants of the Visual Studio 2005 IDE codebase. One is SQL Server Management Studio, another is the Database Engine Tuning Advisor and the third is the aforementioned VS 2005 Premier Partner Edition. At some point in the VS 2005 development cycle, the SQL 2005 group took a cut of the IDE code and made it their own. The most similarities are in Management Studio, but if you compare it with the VS 2005 IDE you’ll notice slightly different menu items and behaviors.

I assume that the development groups had a good reason (release date??) to diverge these huge IDE codebases, but it seems like they created a mess for themselves.

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