Visual Studio Database Projects allow developers to create, manage, update, and deploy databases with the same development tools and processes as any other source code project.
A Visual Studio Database Project is a standard project Visual Studio project type that gives database developers the same level of integration with the development process as other source code project type. Different versions of Visual Studio has included different levels of support for database projects and database development.
Visual Studio 2005 introduced a project type called a "database project", which was primarily a collection of SQL scripts. There was no build or deployment support for this project. It did have source control integration and permitted execution of scripts directly against a referenced connection. This type of project is considered obsolete, and is no longer provided with Visual Studio.
Visual Studio 2008 Database Edition GDR introduced a new project, also called a "database project", to replace the previous project type. This new project type, a dbproj, behaved more like a source code project, in that it supported refactoring, code analysis, and had explicit build and deployment support within Visual Studio. Visual Studio 2010 included this project as its sole form of database project.
Visual Studio 11 includes a newer form of the database project, called a SQL Server Data Tools or SSDT project. (SSDT projects are also available as an add-on to Visual Studio 2010). These sqlproj projects are similar to VS2010 database projects, but provide better integration into the Visual Studio IDE, support SQL Azure deployment, and provide a new connected Object Explorer experience within Visual Studio.
This tag is appropriate for questions on any of these database project types, or the Visual Studio tools that are used to manage them (such as vsdbcmd).
