SQL Server Compact Toolbox available for Visual Studio 11

Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview is now available for testing. As one of the first third party add-ins, a build of the SQL Server Compact Toolbox version 2.4 that supports this Visual Studio Preview version is available via Extension Manager or in the Visual Studio Gallery.

In order to add support for Visual Studio version 11 in an existing add-in, all you need to do is modify the source.extension.vsixmanifest file as shown below:

    <SupportedProducts>
      <VisualStudio Version="10.0">
        <Edition>Pro</Edition>
      </VisualStudio>
      <VisualStudio Version="11.0">
        <Edition>Pro</Edition>
      </VisualStudio>
    </SupportedProducts>

The result of this change is that the add-in can now be installed for several versions of Visual Studio.

I have had to make some changes, as the Toolbox currently depends on SQL Server Compact 3.5 SP2 to store it’s connections, and only SQL Server Compact 4.0 is included with Visual Studio 11. In the Developer Preview the version of SQL Server Compact included is the 4.0 RTM version, so no changes there for now.

To detect which version of Visual Studio you are running, you can use the following code in your Package.cs class:

public Version VisualStudioVersion
{
    get
    {
        var dte = this.GetServiceHelper(typeof(EnvDTE.DTE)) as EnvDTE.DTE;
        string root = dte.RegistryRoot;

        if (root.Contains("10.0"))
        {
            return new Version(10, 0);
        }
        else if (root.Contains("11.0"))
        {
            return new Version(11, 0);
        }
        else
        {
            return new Version(0, 0);
        }
    }
    set
    {
        this.VisualStudioVersion = value;
    }
}

I am currently not bringing forward any 4.0 connections defined in the VS 2010 edition of the add-in. Please let me know if a feature to import these connections to the VS 11 Server Explorer would be useful.

Also, would it be of interest to be able to manage 3.5 databases in VS 11, even though they are not supported in Server Explorer?

As always, please provide any feedback in the comments or via the Codeplex issue tracker.