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I've been looking for users that have development tools installed within a company and have identified many that have Visual Studio and believe they need to keep it because they do SQL Queries. In my limited knowledge SQL Management Studio shouldn't require Visual Studio, but I'm not sure.

Does anyone know of any use cases where users performing queries against a database would require Visual Studio?

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Several 2005/2008-era sql server components use pieces of visual studio (often displayed as Visual Studio 2008 Shell in Add/Remove Programs) to display gui's like Server Management Explorer, SQL Analyzer, etc. its likely used for some under-the-hood features as well.

if you open visual studio and go to Help About, you can determine what dot net language components you have installed. in your case, it should just show SQL.

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  • We have several hundred users so examining each one individually won't work. When we examine the software packages installed w/ our tools all we see is "Visual Studio YEAR" it doesn't specify shell vs. any other version. Is there something specific about Shell that differentiates it from the full version? Perhaps a file version or Registry entry that would not otherwise exist?
    – ChadM
    Commented Sep 11, 2013 at 20:28
  • I'm sure there is, if you are that worried about it. I'd recommend you just accept that the users are correct; they do need a visual studio component in order to execute sql queries. otherwise you will get into a dark place telling the difference between 2008 and 2008SP2, or SMSS vs SMSSExpress, etc. you script will need to be updated regularly, and you have to ask yourself if its really worth it.
    – Frank Thomas
    Commented Sep 12, 2013 at 12:11

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