Visual Studio 2012 now supports BI!
My most popular blog has been Visual Studio 2012 does not support BI. In short, this means VS 2012 does not support SSAS, SSIS, or SSRS. Well, not anymore! Just released is Microsoft SQL Server Data Tools – Business Intelligence for Visual Studio 2012, or SSDT-BI or SSDTBI for short. If you have Visual Studio 2012 installed, this will add the Business Intelligence projects for Analysis Services, Integration Services, and Reporting Services. If you don’t have Visual Studio 2012 on your machine, it will install the Visual Studio 2012 integrated shell with those new projects. There will also be a new menu item “SQL Server Data Tools 2012” (if you have VS 2012 installed, the menu “Visual Studio 2012” and “SQL Server Data Tools 2012” point to the same exe). You will still continue to see the menu item “SQL Server Data Tools”, which uses the VS 2010 shell.
Note that SSDT-BI is different than SSDT for Visual Studio 2012, which will not install the BI projects.
Note that projects created in Visual Studio 2010 can be opened in Visual Studio 2012 and the other way around without upgrading or downgrading. Yea!
The installation actually runs a SQL Server 2012 setup that allows you to add the feature “SQL Server Data Tools – Business Intelligence for Visual Studio 2012”. The feature description is “Installs the SQL Server Business Intelligence projects for Analysis Services, Integration Services, and Reporting Services”.
Be aware that during the installation, when on the “Installation Type” step, choose “Perform a new installation of SQL Server 2012” and not “Add features to an existing instance of SQL Server 2012” or you will get a “same architecture installation” failed message. This is very confusing as it seems strange to me to be running a SQL Server 2012 setup, as well as having to indicate to perform a new installation of SQL Server 2012 even though SQL Server 2012 is already installed. Hopefully this post will help to clear things up!
More info:
SQL Server Data Tools – Business Intelligence for Visual Studio 2012 released online
BIDS Templates Come to Visual Studio 2012 in SSDT Update
Installing SSIS for Visual Studio 2012
Can the Microsoft SQL Server Data Tools – Business Intelligence for Visual Studio 2012 work with SQL Server 2008 R2, or just SQL Server 2012 SP1? Other versions of SQL Server?
Hi Ryan,
SSDT will work with SQL Server 2008 R2, no problem.
I have now installed the new version of SSDT 2012 and am not finding SQL Server Database Projects as a project type anymore in my Shell version of VS 2012. That project type was available as a web install before. WHare has it gone? Is the full version of VS required to get it now?
This will be another popular one 🙂
Thanks for sharing!
Man.. please bold ““same architecture installation” failed message.” !!!! You just saved me
Done! 🙂
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction with the cryptic “same architecture installation” failed message!
You said “Note that SSDT-BI is different than SSDT for Visual Studio 2012, which will not install the BI projects.”
So what is the purpose of SSDT for Visual Studio 2012? I installed it and didn’t see much. There were no BI templates; only a “SQL Server Project” template. Also, there was a “SQL” item in the main menu, under which there was:
– Schema Compare – good, not in SSMS as far as I know;
– Transact-SQL editor.
So what’s the point?
and that was it
James, can I get some advice on deploying SSIS/SSRS solutions (SQL Server 2014) from Visual Studio? If memory serves, I think this was installed from SSDTBI_VS2012_x86_ENU.exe. Situation is I am developing solutions from my desktop using Visual Studio 2012 Shell (Integrated). The solutions are stored and deployed to an integration services server running SQL Server 2014. They run completely fine and can also be called from SQL Server Agent via a job. What I’d like to do is to be able to modify and re-deploy the solutions directly on the server (especially useful when remote desktop-ing). On the server I already have a couple of programs installed – namely “SQL Server Data Tools for Visual Studio 2013” and “Visual Studio Professional 2012”. I open the former one, which shows as “Visual Studio 2013 Integrated (Shell)” when opening, and when I select my existing 2012 package I am prompted with “Welcome to SSIS Package Upgrade Wizard”. In the Select Package menu I select my package (called “FleetList.dtsx”) and on next Menu, Select Package Management Options, I leave the default selections ticked (“Update Connection strings to use new provider names”, “Continue upgrade process when a package upgrade fails”, “Ignore Configuration”) and the others left unticked (“Validate Upgraded packages”, “Create new Package ID”). On clicking “Next” to perform Upgrade I get 3 errors: (1) “The package format was migrated from version 6 to version 8. It must be saved to retain migration changes.”, (2) “The connection “{DD029D7E-E3CO-41CO-BFD7-……………..” is not found. This error is thrown by Connections collection when the specific connection element is not found.”, (3) “Error: Package Upgrade: The loading of the package FleetList.dtsx has failed”.
I then have a message stating “The package is upgraded. See list of warnings …”
I click “ok” and the package opens with some Warning messages. However, when I right-click and execute package I immediately have a “Save File As” window appear inviting me to save the solution. I select a location within the current solution folder (defaults to this), but I get an Access Denied message “System.UnauthorisedAccessException: Access to the path ‘E:\Finance\Server\…………. \Development\Project.params is denied”.