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I am part of the VS DATA Orcas Data Review Working Group (what a name), which is an external group to Microsoft helping provide input, review and plan on some of the data tools that will be coming in the future release of Visual Studio (codename Orcas). If you heard Jackie Goldstein on DotNetRocks this last week, he mentioned it too, and actually mentioned a few very high-level bits of information. There are some very, very intelligent people involved (makes you wonder how I got on the team) and some excellent discussions going on.

Our software design review for some of the ideas and plans was last week, and some of the demos were awesome. A major goal and topic of the SDR was reviewing the Visual Studio Data Team's vision for making Visual Studio a better product for use by database developers. This involves getting some data tools integrated into Visual Studio so that the database developer doesn't have to use both SSMS and VS.

There are going to be some great and wonderful things coming (proposed at this point anyway) in the next release of Visual Studio after 2005. I sure wish they were part of 2005. All I can tell you right now is that the increases in usability and productivity for database developers will be greatly enhanced.

I know its early, but start getting excited!