Quest Begins To 'Fuze' Oracle Databases with VSTS 2010
Developers can now take a look at the Oracle Database Schema Provider that will plug into Microsoft's Visual Studio Team System, thanks to the release of the first beta of the DSP this week.
Microsoft announced back in February at the VSLive! conference in San Francisco that the Oracle database plug-in to VSTS 2010 would be offered as an option by Quest Software, maker of, among other things, the widely used Toad for Oracle tools. Quest launched the beta of the new tool, dubbed Project Fuze.
"Anybody that is interested in seeing what Oracle development will look like in Visual Studio Team System 2010 and beyond can take a look at the Project Fuze data and this will let Oracle developers start to participate in the richness of Oracle application lifecycle management," said Daniel Wood, Quest's head of development.
"Project Fuze is intended for those that have already adopted VSTS and Team Foundation Server as their ALM platform for .NET and SQL Server development. Within that community we also have Oracle installs, but they would like this same tool set. On the flip side are shops that have Oracle deployments and are looking for some type of ALM solution. Many of them do use Visual Studio Team System on the application side, so they would like to bring that over to the Oracle side."
The question is, will shops be willing to pay for this option? Quest is not revealing pricing. When (I first wrote about the deal between Microsoft and Quest to provide the DSP, a reader pointed out to Oracle's Developer Tools for Visual Studio, or ODT. "Why pay for a third-party plug-in when you can get it for free from the source?" the reader asked.
Wood explained: "The Oracle plug-in for Visual Studio is not meant to integrate with Team System or Team Foundation Server," he said. "On the ALM side, it's there as an extension of Oracle Data Provider, to demonstrate basic functionality of browsing a database and viewing objects within the database; it will not operate with the database professional features in Visual Studio."
The beta can be downloaded here. If you test it, let me know what you think at jschwartz@1105media.com.
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 07/23/2009