One of the great benefits of Visual Studio 2008 is the ability for it to target multiple .Net Frameworks. This means, in theory you could go ahead and begin using Visual Studio 2008 even though you still need to write apps that are 2005 / .Net 2.0 compliant. You might be tempted to go ahead and uninstall 2005. And that would be fine if you are only doing .Net development. But wait…
If you are still doing SQL Server BIDS (Business Intelligence Developer Studio) then don’t uninstall Visual Studio 2005! Currently there’s no support in VS2008 for doing SQL Server 2005 BIDS Development. If you uninstall VS2005 you won’t be able to do any more BIDS work. Trust me, I found out the hard way.
After uninstalling VS2005, I went to do a BIDS project and that’s when I got hit with the nasty surprise. The uninstall had also removed the Dev Environment that was shared with BIDS. I tried to rerun the install of my SQL Server Developer Edition, but for some reason it thought I wanted to upgrade. It kept giving me the message “You cannot upgrade a version of SQL Server from the GUI, you must use the command line.”
I finally had to reinstall VS2005, along with all it’s service packs. After that I was able to work on my BIDS projects again. So take it from me, if you are still doing SQL Server 2005 Business Intelligence projects, Visual Studio 2005 still has some life in it yet.
Arcane Code 
Hello,
Does the Visual Studio 2005 SP1 install the Analysis Services Project template? Or ca we download this template seperately? I tried reinstalling my SQl Server 2005(Standard Edition) with workstaion components but couldn’t find that template in the Project Templates menu of Visual Studio 2005…. Can you pleae assist?
Regards,
Mafaz
In order to get the Analysis Services Template, you have to install the SQL Server Developer Edition. SSDE will install what it calls Business Intelligence Developers Studio, or BIDS, which is really Visual Studio 2005 with the additional templates for Analysis Services as well as Integration Services and Reporting Services.
Thank You very much. Luckily I got the template appear on my project template with installing the SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition again. Thanks again.
Hi,
While searching for an answer to the following question I came across your article. I’ve been wondering about the following: when you’ve got SQL Server 2005 + SP2 installed and as BIDS is actually Visual Studio with different templates, is SP1 for Visual Studio required as well? Do you happen to know the answer to this?
Thanks in advance,
Valentino.
This is good news, Im really looking forward to playing around with it once the beta opens up.,
It is healthy, I shall come on your site more often, thank.,
No Analysis Services templates in the Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS).
can any one help? please..