Is it possible to install Developer Edition of SQL Server as the primary development server?

Question

Is it possible to install Developer edition of SQL Server on a Windows server environment as development server? Each developer will have a local copies of same SQL Server edition and will connect to this development server for data/object synchronization.

Also, if you can refer a link for a full description of this product.

Answer 1

If your developers use Visual Studio Pro or better, they can chose to install SQL Server Developer edition as part of the VS install. As mentioned, SQL Server Developer edition is feature-identical to SQL Server Enterprise. You may also note that SQL Server 2012 introduces 'LocalDB' for offine development - more about that here.

For working with any developer edition of SQL Server, there are a couple of options:

1. Use the (minimal) tools included for connecting to databases
   inside of VS

2. Download and install SQL Server Data tools from here - I blogged about what you can do with SSDT here. You can run SSDT from within VS or stand-alone.

3. Download and install SQL Server Management studio - here
4. Download and install SQL Server Express w/Advanced Services from here - which includes a version of SQL Server Management Studio

Here's a blog that compare SQL Server tools for SQL Server 2008.

Answer 2

Absolutely possible. Developer Edition is identical to Enterprise Edition with the exception of its licensing. Be sure to review the licensing information to ensure your intended use matches the allowed use.

Answer 3

Indeed this setup is possible. When the developers open Sql Server Management Studio, instead of connecting to a locally installed instance (not necessary given your requested setup, but I would still install it) then they would connect to the shared instance on the development server.

That is how our shop is setup.