This version of the Microsoft® Visual Database Tools gives you more power and flexibility when working with databases. The Database Designer and Query Designer work with the latest versions of Microsoft® SQL Server™, Oracle, and Microsoft® Access databases.
The following new features and expanded functionality make database design and management faster, easier, and more powerful.
The following SQL Server functionality has been added or improved:
For more information about features specific to Microsoft SQL Server, see Working with SQL Server Databases.
With this release, Oracle database support has been added to the Visual Database Tools. Now you can use the powerful visual design tools to manage your Oracle databases. Specifically, the following functionality has been added for Oracle databases:
For more information about features specific to Oracle, see Working with Oracle Databases.
Several design enhancements make it easier to use the database tools, and give you more control over your database diagrams and queries. This version of the Visual Database Tools offers the following new or improved features:
Printing, previewing page breaks, and displaying database diagrams is much easier with the addition of new formatting features and custom diagram views that show just the information you want to see.
For more information, see Printing and Previewing Database Diagrams.
In a database diagram, you can expand tables to show more properties or collapse them to save space on the diagram. There are five defined views available, including a Custom View, which give you greater flexibility in displaying your tables in the diagram.
For more information, see Changing a Table View.
In a database diagram, you can use new features to automatically rearrange the tables in the diagram window. With the press of a button, Database Designer will analyze the relationships between your tables and determine the best layout of the tables for easy viewing.
For more information, see Arranging Tables Automatically.
In a database diagram, the new zooming features allow you to select specific items and size them to fit in the diagram window. This makes it easy to arrange your database diagram for printing.
For more information, see Zooming a Database Diagram.
You can easily add labels to the relationship lines between tables identifying the relationship between the tables. The relationship lines can be customized in the Property Pages of the relationship.
For more information, see Adding Labels to Relationship Lines.
You can easily add text annotations to your diagrams. Text headings or notes can enhance the presentation of your database diagram.
For more information, see Annotating Diagrams.
In addition to modifying tables in a database diagram, you can use the Database Designer to modify the structure of a single table in your database. You can create a new table in design mode, or you can edit the properties of existing tables to update the database.
For more information, see Tables.
You can use the View Designer to create special views to extract and combine just the information you need from one or more existing database tables.
For more information, see Working with Database Views in Data View.
With this release of the Visual Database Tools, the Query Designer can now work with dates as mathematical expressions.
For more information, see Operators for Expressions.
In Query Designer, you can now create Make Table and Insert Values queries. With an Insert Values query, you can create new rows and insert values into specified columns. The Make Table query creates a new table and creates rows in the table by copying the results of a query into the table.
For more information, see Supported Query Types, Creating Insert Values Queries and Creating Make Table Queries.