BI

Add Reporting, Analysis and Integration Services Project Types to Visual Studio 2019

If you have installed Visual Studio 2019 you are probably missing project type for Microsoft BI stack like Reporting Services Project Type, Analysis and Integration Services project type. You are surprised because during the installation you have setup also SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) to be installed. Then you have searched for SSDT in google discovering that latest version was published only for Visual Studio 2017.

There was a major change in delivering BI projects to Visual Studio 2019 and later. These projects are delivered as standalone Visual Studio extension and the SSDT installation from Visual Studio installer contains only SQL Server project type and some related tools.

It is still correct to install Visual Studion2019 with SSTD selected like in this picture:

But after that is done you should also complete installation of BI stack project types:

Download Reporting Services project type

Download Analysis Services project type

Download Integration Services project type

After installation will finish you can start Visual Studio 2019 and see that all your missing project types are there like in VS 2017:

Another important thing to remember is that with this different kind of installation is coming different update process: No more searching for SSDT updates on the web. You will receive notifications about updates for MS BI projects directly in Visual Studio:

This can cause a few issues when using source control like Azure DevOps across the team. If one the team members has enabled automatic updates installation in Visual Studio it can easily happen, that he will upgrade extensions which means that BI projects version will also be upgraded. After he will commit and other team members without updates to be installed will get the latest their project will be marked as Invalid (unsupported) and they must do an update to fix that issue. In a really large team it’s better to switch automatic updates off and manage this process centrally.

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