In this blog post, we will look into a useful must-have Visual Studio 2019 extensions for database projects that help you in building database related queries and ORM related development with great ease.
Visual Studio is one of the best developer friendly Integrated Development Environment (IDE). The IDE has tons of features that help to ease the development process. These features can be further customized or new features can be added using Visual Studio Extensions. These extensions are available at Visual Studio Marketplace. Here is the list of top 5 extensions that will be discussed in the blog post.
List of Visual Studio 2019 Extensions for Database projects
- SQL Search by Redgate
- Entity Framework Visual Editor
- SQLite/SQL Server Compact Toolbox
- LINQ Insight Express ORM Profiler
- LINQ Insight Express ORM Profiler
A brief discussion of these extensions
Apr 29, 2020 Microsoft SQL Server Compact 4.0 is a free, embedded database that software developers can use for building ASP.NET websites and Windows desktop applications. SQL Server Compact 4.0 has a small footprint and supports private deployment of its binaries within the application folder, easy application development in Visual Studio and WebMatrix, and seamless migration of schema and data to SQL Server. Install sqlmobile30devtoolsenu.msi from the Visual Studio install media, located in the folder: vs wcu SQLCE first. Then the CE tools will install. Then the CE tools will install. I had this problem, and it was probably because I uninstalled the SQL Server Mobile Edition tools first.
SQL Search by Redgate: The extension help you quickly search and navigate across multiple SQL Server database objects. The features provided by the extensions are, quickly find fragments in SQL tables, views, stored procedures, functions, views, scheduled jobs. The user can search using wildcards and booleans and can find references to an object. The same extension can also be used in SQL Server Management Studio as well. The extension has been downloaded more than 135K.
Entity Framework Visual Editor: The is one of my favorites extension, it allows to see the visual design of the entities (persistent classes) along with the fast and easy way to add new model files. The entities hierarchy and cardinalities like Inheritence, one to many, many to many are cleanly depicted in the visual editor. A few of the other good features of this extension are the abilities to import entities from existing C# source, compiled DbContext from EF6 and EFCore assemblies, generate output from T4 templates. Classes and enumeration are displayed in different color schemes to visually group the model and many others. The extension also has a great step by step documentation to get the most from the editor.
SQLite/SQL Server Compact Toolbox: If you use embedded databases like SQLite or SQL Server compact edition for development purposes then this extension will really stand out for you. The extension provides a very convenient to script tables and data, helps in migrating from SQLite or SQL Server Compact to SQL Server (LocalDB/Express) or SQL Server or SQL Azure via script. The extension can be used to explore all the database objects, SQL queries can be executed from within the editor, it supports syntax coloring and has built-in support for displaying query estimates and actual plans. The extension can also be used to generate LINQ to SQL classes and much more.
EntityFramework Reverse POCO Generator: This is another great extension that has been downloaded and installed more than 424K times. The extension allows a developer to reverse engineer an existing database and generate POCO (Plain Old C# Class) classes, configuration mappings, and the DBContext class. At the time of writing SQL Server, SQL Server Compact 3.5 and 4.0 are supported.
LINQ Insight Express ORM Profiler: The extension provides very useful features for LINQ and ORM development. It provides design-time LINQ query execution and supports preview of generated SQL statements. It can help in profiling data access events for ORMs like Entity Framework, NHibernate, LinqConnect and LINQ to SQL mappings. Few of the benefits provided by the extension are, it fully integrates with Visual Studio and you can view SQL to LINQ queries with leaving the IDE, you can perform Query Analysis, it detects changes in the database context and queries and even provides variable value replacement and the best of all you can preview generated SQL at design time.
This concludes the post about my list of top must-have Visual Studio 2019 extensions for database projects, I hope you found this post helpful, thanks for visiting, Cheers!!!
Sql Visual Studio
If you want to explore all the available Visual Studio 2019 extensions for databases, you can visit the Visual Studio Marketplace here: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/
[Further readings: Visual Studio 2019 Output Window | How to navigate code in Visual Studio 2019 | How to change Visual Studio 2019 Theme | Top 7 must have Visual Studio 2019 extensions]
Looks like there is some sort of bug with the install program for the Visual Studio Tools. The error message says that some required component is missing, or that there is an version conflict. There is a fix for this posted at the MSDN Forums by Ginny Caughey, I’ll repeat it here:
Install sqlmobile30devtoolsenu.msi from the Visual Studio install media, located in the folder: vswcuSQLCE first. Then the CE tools will install.
Ms Sql Toolbox
I had this problem, and it was probably because I uninstalled the SQL Server Mobile Edition tools first. This seems to be a bug from Microsoft in that it requires the previous version of the database or that the uninstaller simply uninstalls too much.
Sql Management Studio For Mac
The reason I uninstalled the Mobile Editon tools was because it showed up in the datasource list in Visual Studio. After installing the .msi file above, and installing the CE Tools – everything looks right in Visual Studio finally.