I’ve been doing a lot of work with the Database, er Development edition of VSTS 2008. Of course I’m running the GDR-R2 version which really changed the architecture of the database projects, as well as the process of building and deploying.

Prior to the GDR, if you deployed a database project it would automatically create a Data Connection in the Server Explorer window. I liked this, because I would almost always follow-up a first time deployment with some data generation or unit testing, and it just made it easier to select the pre-defined connection from the dropdowns. It seems that the GDR erased this timesaver.

For example, I just deployed a GDR-R2 database project according to these settings:

And when I go to the Server Explorer window, I don’t see my VSTS\dev.AdventureWorks2009.dbo connection like I would have expected:

Well it seems that this change was by design and it is configurable! According to Duke Kamstra, there’s a property in the database project (.dbproj) file that lets you control this behavior:

<DeployToDatabaseAddToServerExplorer>False</DeployToDatabaseAddToServerExplorer>

If you set the property to True, the connection will get added to the list which Server Explorer displays, and the behavior I enjoyed prior to GDR will return. For added coolness, if you always want this behavior you could modify the template(s) that are instantiate dbproj file(s) from: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio [9.0 | 10.0]\VSTSDB\Extensions\SqlServer\ProjectItems\*\*.dbproj

Duke also tells me that the same property exists in Visual Studio 2010.