Visual InterDev provides you with great flexibility in designing data-centric Web applications. You can use any database supported by ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) for which you have drivers, including Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Access, Visual FoxPro, Oracle, and others. You can interact directly with the database or use views, stored procedures, and other database entities to manage the database. The database can be physically located on the same computer as your Web server or on a different computer. You can use the Web server for all your database access or access the database directly from a client computer.
To make it easy to build data-centric applications, Visual InterDev provides the following features.
Database projects are a separate project type that you can add to your Visual InterDev solutions. They include the tools necessary to build and manage databases as a separate component from Web pages.
For More Information See Managing Database Projects, online in MSDN Library Visual Studio 6.0.
The Data View window provides a live view of the data to which your database or Web project is currently connected. From the Data View window, you can launch tools to manage your database.
For More Information See Data View Window, online in MSDN Library Visual Studio 6.0.
The Visual Database Tools are a set of tools (Database Designer and Query Designer) for managing and querying your database graphically. With the Database Designer, you can create and modify table definitions, column definitions, and relationships between tables in Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle databases. With the Query Designer, you can visually create and run SQL statements. A View Designer helps you create views.
For More Information See Introducing the Visual Database Tools, online in MSDN Library Visual Studio 6.0.
The data environment is a repository in your Web project for information required to connect to and access data in databases. The data environment stores reusable connection strings that you can use to access databases from your Web pages. In addition, the data environment stores data commands that represent record sets, based on database objects or SQL commands.
For More Information See The Data Environment, online in MSDN Library Visual Studio 6.0.
The data-bound controls are controls such as text boxes, buttons, and so on that you can put on a Web page and that are automatically bound to specific fields in a database record. Data-bound controls already include the script required to make data connections, extract data, and update the database, so that you can build database access into your Web pages with little or no additional scripting.
For More Information See the following topics online in MSDN Library Visual Studio 6.0.
Source control for database objects provides a link between databases and your source control system so you can place SQL scripts and compiled stored procedures under source control. Source control makes development simpler and more secure if you have more than one database programmer working on a project.
For More Information See Adding Source Control to a Database Project, online in MSDN Library Visual Studio 6.0.