I have blogged previously at SSDT – What’s in a name? about the naming confusion that Microsoft have created by their inconsistent use of the term “SQL Server Data Tools” (SSDT) in SQL Server 2012. Is it a Visual Studio shell incorporating project templates for building databases, SSIS packages, SSAS cubes & SSRS reports? Or is it simply the project template for databases? Pick any two people on the SQL Server team and they’ll probably give you two different (and probably ambiguous) answers.
The situation infuriates the hell out of me but probably not as much as it does this guy who posted to the SSDT forum:
I installed SSDT 2012 (December version) on an existing Visual Studio 2012 Premium install but I can't find the BI templates!!!?
When informed that the BI project templates (i.e. SSIS, SSAS, SSRS) only come with a SQL Server installation and that actually they’re (still) not available for VS2012 he had this to say:
I wish this was better documented so that I could have saved a few hours.
That’s a guy who has wasted hours of his life simply because Microsoft can’t name their products properly and sensibly. Is it really that difficult?
Rant over. Sorry, but it needed to be said.
UPDATE. A day after publishing this blog post and I stumble across someone asking a question about SSIS on the SSDT forum. The SSDT forum is for questions about SSDT database projects but of course, this person has read all the documentation from Microsoft saying that SSIS is part of SSDT and hence posts his SSIS questions on the SSDT forum. This is bad. Bad bad bad.