From Matt Nunn
"On Friday 1st December 2006 the development team officially announced that Data Dude was done and was being released to manufacture. It should be available for download to MSDN subscribers on December 7th 2006 and generally available for purchase on January 1st 2007."
This is great news. I gave a 30 minutes talk today at a QA Gathering in Israel about this tool, and how it enables better testing scenarios coupled with the whole lifecycle management idea that is team system.
The more I invest time in this tool(team system as a whole, and data dude in particular), the more I realize that some amazing work has been done to revolutionize the "traditional" ways in which Microsoft Oriented development teams work to produce software today.
The inclusion of the DBA in the development cycle is nothing less that inspiring, and will solve many problems for many people. The inclusion of database tests, refactoring and work item management from within the tool is jaw dropping considering the efforts people go through today (those who bother to to do this right) to make this happen with existing tools.
The notion of configuration management the the daily build in the cycle, and connection to tests and work items is one of the most powerful things about this system, and I was truly excited to show demos of this today.
It's funny - the shorter your presentation is (30 minutes in this case), the harder you work on it. You try to conceptualize the points you want to make across, how you'll do it, how to sum up very large concepts in very short paragraphs (quick - what's Team System in 3 sentences or less?), and what demos fit in the allotted time frame. oh, and it should be interesting.
No wonder I was working on this until 4 am for a couple of days until I had this set right in my mind. And then, you get on stage, and it's over quicker than you ever imagined. all you're left with is the adrenaline rush, and people asking for your business card.
DataDude is awesome and will open a whole new market of possibilities. Did I mention I'm looking for a great DBA? :)