9 November 2021. A video appears on YouTube named “Welcome to Visual Studio 2022 – by Scott Hanselman and friends”. No, I’m not going to link to it.
Why? Because I’m sick to death of insincere corporatese which refers to people who work together as “friends”, and is an order of magnitude worse when the video starts with the same smarmy “Hey friends!”. Let me be clear. I am not your friend, Hanselman. I have never met you, I know nothing about you. You know even less about me, aside from the fact that your company censored one of my comments on that video pointing out that you had, yet again, launched an incomplete product. (So much for me being your “friend”; apparently I don’t even merit the respect of being treated for what I REALLY am, “a paying customer”.)
What am I referring to? The SQL Server database management system, which is in my view an awesome product (one of the few that Microsoft still make), has a number of modules which cluster around the server engine. There is Analysis Services (SSAS), there is Reporting Services (SSRS), and there is Integration Services (SSIS) which allows you to connect different data sources to data destinations.
You create “packages” for SSIS, packages being somewhat like flowcharts indicating how a set of actions (called “tasks”) will flow.
How do you create them? You do it in Visual Studio (VS), Microsoft’s flagship code editor. Which, I must admit, is also an excellent product generally. However, the ability to create SSIS packages is not native to Visual Studio. You need an extension called “SQL Server Integration Services Projects”.
Here’s the problem. Yet again, they have released a new edition of Visual Studio WITHOUT bothering to complete the extensions that you need for SQL Server. As another viewer of the aforementioned video put it (in a comment that has not been deleted… yet at least):
Bob Bonser 1 month ago (edited): Why is it every time a new version is released it is NEVER ready to support SSIS, SSRS, and SSAS projects right out of the box? It’s always weeks to months until we have extensions to support them. That is becoming unacceptable!
Kudos to you, Bob, for your comment surviving. Mine didn’t. It is possible that Microsoft’s censors didn’t like the fact that I put a link to a page in the Microsoft Community where the Microsoft staff just completely blew off customers who raised this:
SQL Server Integration Services Projects for Visual Studio 2022
Evan McClintock – Reported Nov 08, 2021
[regression] [worked-in:16.11.5]
https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/t/SQL-Server-Integration-Services-Projects/1574327
I’m unable to open my SSIS project in Visual Studio 2022, and there is no extension currently available to open it. Any estimate as to when such an extension to open these projects will be released?
Several other people raised this. And what was a Microsoft Employee’s response?
Ran Ye [MSFT] Closed
We’re currently planning for SSIS Projects extension to support VS22, but it’s early in the process, so ETA is still TBD. Nov 18, 2021
https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/t/SQL-Server-Integration-Services-Projects/1574327
Yes, they closed it. They closed the bloody thing. It was so “early in the process” that VS 2022 had already been out there for download for over a week when he posted that,but they’ll get around to the extension, some day, maybe. And that’s it, discussion over. No promise to keep people updated, no blog to track progress, nada.
Your humble correspondent had, in the meantime, made the mistake of uninstalling VS2019 after installing VS2022 earlier in the morning, before he came across the above gem. And he was therefore left with no way to edit his SSIS packages. This, incidentally, was coming up to 2 months after VS2022’s release.
So, if you are using VS2019 to work on SQL Server packages? DON’T uninstall it until or unless you know for certain that there are functional extensions for VS2022.
The Positive Bit
A lot of people in the Community thread referred to above (and who had, like me, deleted VS2019 after installing VS2022) could not find a download for reinstalling Visual Studio 2019.
If you look in the Start menu, however, you should find a program called Visual Studio Installer. I was able to reinstall VS2019 via that. The two coexist quite happily and didn’t seem to have a problem with the fact that VS2019 was (re)installed after VS2022 had been.
(Oh, and bonus points for anyone who picked up my use of “compadre” as a counterpoint to Hanselman’s smarmy use of “friends”.)
Captain’s Blog, Supplemental (230127.1)
As of November 2022, SQL Server 2022 was released and around that time (unfortunately I can’t specify the exact date) the necessary tools were released for Visual Studio 2022. I’m using them, and they work just fine. Just remember that when the NEXT release of Visual Studio comes out, the same thing will happen again; you will need to ensure that you retain VS2022 until such time as the subsequent release of SQL Server comes out if you want to work with SSIS.