With the release of all Visual Studio 2008, TFS 2008, and SQL 2008, I set about upgrading I set about upgrading my main development laptop. Currently I have VS 2008, Team Explorer 2008 and SQL 2005 client tools installed. I opted to download the full installer for the SP1 updates as opposed to the bootstrapper options.
I knew I needed to install VS 2008 SP1 prior to TFS 2008 SP1, but for some reason decided to go with the SQL upgrade first. As I mentioned before, I currently only have the client tools installed, as I like to keep my SQL servers on virtualized development servers.
The SQL 2008 installer starts off by checking for .Net 3.5 SP1, and if it does not exist, it will install it on your machine, along with a hotfix for windows installer. After this is complete, you are required to reboot your machine. I opted for the upgrade option, hoping that everything just works. I’m not sure if you can do a side by side install with SQL 2005 client tools and 2008.
After selecting my options, an upgrade check is preformed, and it failed because I have not installed VS 2008 SP1 yet. OK, I wanted to install that anyway, so I canceled out and launched the VS 2008 SP1 installer. As with most service packs for Visual Studio it takes awhile to apply, but my experience was more positive then the service packs for VS 2005. No reboot was required, so I moved onto the TFS 2008 SP1 install.
So I must have mis-understood or did not read something with the TFS 2008 SP1 installer. It looks like it’s for the server components only, and VS 2008 SP1 handles upgrades to Team Explorer as well. This blog post makes reference to this, and even says that if you are installing Team Explorer on your TFS server, to install VS 2008 SP1. Looking at Help/About Microsoft Visual Studio, I see the version number for VS 2008 is now 9.0.30729.1 SP, and looking at the details for Team Explorer shows the same version number.
Jumping back to the SQL 2008 installer, I proceeding with my update. However it wasn’t really an update as much as it was a side by side install. Remember, I was just doing the client tools, had I had the database components installed, I assume that those would have been upgraded. I have a couple of SQL 2005 instances I can try an upgrade on to see what happens. The install went very smoothly and there were no issues.
First impressions of the new SQL Management studio are extremely positive. I saw the intelli-sense demo at the launch event, but can’t really test it as I already have SQL Prompt installed. My job as a Pseudo-DBA just got easier.Here are some new features I found.
- When running queries, you can view the results in traditional grid view, but also as text (with options to choose your column delimiters), or export to a text (.rpt) file.
- The new activity monitor actually provides useful information (well alot more information then the old one ever did). It reminds me of the task manager in Windows Server 2008. The new activity monitor does not work with SQL 2000, but I will be eliminating all SQL 2000 boxes by the end of September. As 4 line graphs across the top you get % Processor time, Waiting Tasks, Database I/O and Batch Requests/Sec. On the bottom you get 4 collapsible lists: Processes, Resource Waits, Data File I/O and Recent Expensive Queries.
- The database publishing wizard from Visual Studio is now included. Actually there are a lot more options to control how your scripts are generated.
- There are some very nice default reports built in now as well. The reports were an add-on for SQL 2005, but they are now included (and you can of course write your own). Stuff like Disk Usage, Index Usage, etc. I hope I can find a way to schedule these to be emailed.
- New option to generate Create and Drop Script (along with the original separate options of generate create and generate drop). There is also an option to generate as SQL Agent job.
Finally I went ahead and upgraded our TFS server to SP1. First thing I did was install this month’s Windows Updates, as I was going to have to reboot anyway. Next up was Visual Studio 2008 SP1, as I have VS and Team Explorer installed. Unfortunately I was out of room on my system drive so I had to take the extra step of expanding my virtual hard disk first.
I rebooted the server, and then proceeded to install TFS 2008 SP1. It looked like everything was going good, but it failed at some point. Turns out the SQL server did not survive the reboot, VS 2008 SP1, or the system drive expansion. Somehow my mssqlsystemresource.ldf file got messed up at some point. The event log error stated “One or more files do not match the primary file of the database.”. I got better information out of the SQL error log which pointed me right to the System Resource ldf. I copied the ldf file from another SQL 2005 server and was back in business. The TFS update proceeded without incident after that. In case you are wondering, you can determine your TFS version by looking at the version of Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Server.dll in %Program Files%\Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server\Web Services\Services\bin. For SP1, the version number matches that which is displayed in Visual Studio 2008, or 9.0.30729.1.