Visual Designer in VS2015

I was just about to ask the same thing. I installed VS 2015 yesterday and would like to have the visual designer for it as well. 

Hello,

The last version of Visual Studio supported by the VS integration of Data Access is Visual Studio 2013. The tools distributed through Data Access Q1 2015 (the last version, which includes Visual Designer) will not support Visual Studio 2015.

Let me know if you have further questions.

Regards,
Doroteya
Telerik

Really left us out to dry...

 

Can't you modify the extension installer to install in VS 2015 and release just that? Is it that much different? 

Hello DuelingCats,

Thank you for the feedback.

The absence of a task on our roadmap about the Visual Studio integration in Visual Studio 2015 is directly related to the deprecation of the visual tools. The future releases of Data Access are not planned to include such an improvement.

I am really sorry for your disappointment. 

Regards,
Doroteya
Telerik

[quote]Doroteya said:Hello DuelingCats,

Thank you for the feedback.

The absence of a task on our roadmap about the Visual Studio integration in Visual Studio 2015 is directly related to the deprecation of the visual tools. The future releases of Data Access are not planned to include such an improvement.

I am really sorry for your disappointment. 

Regards,
Doroteya
Telerik

[/quote]

 

Are you saying we should ditch Data Access completely and go to some other EF which includes Visual Designers?

[quote]Fawad said:

[quote]Doroteya said:Hello DuelingCats,

Thank you for the feedback.

The absence of a task on our roadmap about the Visual Studio integration in Visual Studio 2015 is directly related to the deprecation of the visual tools. The future releases of Data Access are not planned to include such an improvement.

I am really sorry for your disappointment. 

Regards,
Doroteya
Telerik

[/quote]

 

 

Are you saying we should ditch Data Access completely and go to some other EF which includes Visual Designers?

[/quote]

 

The bad news for that plan is EF7 also ditched the visual designer.

At this point, is there a reason to stay with Telerik's Data Access compared to Entity Framework? I would take a guess that Entity Framework is more widely and that may influence features and other things that typically go with a more popular framework.

Entity Framework is certainly the default choice, given that it is the Microsoft Solution.

I cannot comment on EF7 but EF6 did not fit with my company's large (1000 table, heavy procedure usage) legacy system.

Code Generation + Linq support are two things that brought me to Data Access instead of EF, whose code generator just sort of gave up.

Of course, now there is not even a generator without the 15.1 version so kinda up a creek on that one.  The versions are at least compatible enough now that I can run the generator from 15.1 and upgrade that to 15.2 but its a pain to do.

 

For me, its stick with Data Access or create a working generator for another Linq to Db provider.  EF7 is not released, nHibernate does not have the best Linq support, Linq-to-Sql is kinda sunset and inflexible in terms of mappings.  Other libs want my credit card before I can try them.

There could be a temporary reprieve in that EF6 has been updated to work with VS2015 and will be supported for the foreseeable future. So this is better than Telerik's approach of demanding that we stick with VS2013 if we want the visual designer. I, like many others, am seriously reviewing our ORM choice in light of this announcement from Telerik.

Hi,

 I'm also facing this "issue". I don't know is it so big problem but is it possible to make 2015.1 version to work with VS 2015. In 2015 designer is out but maybe its possible to make older version (2015.1) compatible with 2015. Is that possible? Maybe some patch or something?

 

 

Hi Doroteya, I can understand that Telerik wishes to move to a more flexible option for the company and influence how people develop applications, however, the whole point of Telerik's existance from the get go is to provide tools for developers to be able to focus on what they're developing rather than compatibility testing and patchworking tools to work together.

It is quite a task to decide which ORM to go to and at this point in my project's lifecycle, I had already invested a good amount of time customizing the source T4 template Telerik provides us with to generate objects. Now, my entire data layer and strategy is compromised if I want to move forward or I have to keep VS2013 installed only to open the visual designer and update from database and generate code from there.

Generating objects saves and has saved me countless hours of writing objects from scratch and I find it a poor decision on Telerik's part to not have at least one version of their Data Access controls be installable on VS 2015. Being on 2015 would at least give us the time to refactor or migrate to another solution while getting the benefits of the updated VS platform.

http://www.telerik.com/blogs/data-access-vnext-is-our-most-powerful-version-yet

With this move, Telerik has cornered it's subscribers who have wholeheartedly adopted Telerik's great set of tools and built their solution on said tools only to have the rug pulled out from underneath them with no options other than sticking with old technology and for once, not because the developers are too busy or lazy to upgrade but because the supplier has decided to not make an extra effort to support a brand new product which will be around for a while.

I've been a longtime subscriber of Telerik's control platform but this move jeopardizes my trust in Telerik as others like me have to go back to the drawing board and review something that we all thought was put to bed and running smooth.

I'd be curious to know how much time it would cost Telerik to build just one version that installs on VS2015 versus the amount of time it'll take me and others in my situation to either convert our process and layer or move to another altogether.

With this post, I hope to re-frame the position Telerik has put us in and seriously reconsider, for the sake of the customers time, building even a single release with the designer for VS2015.

It's great that Telerik looks ahead and stays on the cusp of technology and trends but in the world of software development, processes are put in place and applications need support and further enhancements where it just doesn't make sense to reinvest time figuring something out that has already been dealt with.

Let me, and us, know if there's anything we can do at all to help with the workaround for integrating the designer functionality into VS2015. I'm sure others in the community would be glad to collaborate with me to get this going so we can all benefit, at no cost to Telerik just because we can't afford to stay behind OR to convert our processes at this time.

Regards,

Robin

Hi Doroteya, I can understand that Telerik wishes to move to a more flexible option for the company and influence how people develop applications, however, the whole point of Telerik's existance from the get go is to provide tools for developers to be able to focus on what they're developing rather than compatibility testing and patchworking tools to work together.

It is quite a task to decide which ORM to go to and at this point in my project's lifecycle, I had already invested a good amount of time customizing the source T4 template Telerik provides us with to generate objects. Now, my entire data layer and strategy is compromised if I want to move forward or I have to keep VS2013 installed only to open the visual designer and update from database and generate code from there.

Generating objects saves and has saved me countless hours of writing objects from scratch and I find it a poor decision on Telerik's part to not have at least one version of their Data Access controls be installable on VS 2015. Being on 2015 would at least give us the time to refactor or migrate to another solution while getting the benefits of the updated VS platform.

http://www.telerik.com/blogs/data-access-vnext-is-our-most-powerful-version-yet

With this move, Telerik has cornered it's subscribers who have wholeheartedly adopted Telerik's great set of tools and built their solution on said tools only to have the rug pulled out from underneath them with no options other than sticking with old technology and for once, not because the developers are too busy or lazy to upgrade but because the supplier has decided to not make an extra effort to support a brand new product which will be around for a while.

I've been a longtime subscriber of Telerik's control platform but this move jeopardizes my trust in Telerik as others like me have to go back to the drawing board and review something that we all thought was put to bed and running smooth.

I'd be curious to know how much time it would cost Telerik to build just one version that installs on VS2015 versus the amount of time it'll take me and others in my situation to either convert our process and layer or move to another altogether.

With this post, I hope to re-frame the position Telerik has put us in and seriously reconsider, for the sake of the customers time, building even a single release with the designer for VS2015.

It's great that Telerik looks ahead and stays on the cusp of technology and trends but in the world of software development, processes are put in place and applications need support and further enhancements where it just doesn't make sense to reinvest time figuring something out that has already been dealt with.

Let me, and us, know if there's anything we can do at all to help with the workaround for integrating the designer functionality into VS2015. I'm sure others in the community would be glad to collaborate with me to get this going so we can all benefit, at no cost to Telerik just because we can't afford to stay behind OR to convert our processes at this time.

Regards,

Robin

Hello,

Thanks to all of you for your feedback.

Currently, we are working on a tool that will fill the gap left by the code generation tools of Data Access. It will be a simple tool that will generate fluent models based on the schemata of the databases. Our idea is to make the tool independent from any version of Visual Studio and to distribute it through a NuGet package. 

Additionally, there will be an official announcement on the topic in the Telerik blog.

Thank you all for your patience and understanding.


Regards,
Doroteya
Telerik

Doroteya,

thank you for sharing this information with us. At least now we know that we are not left in the cold and that Telerik is indeed working on something to fill that gap.

This whole fuss could probably have been avoided if such a statement would have come earlier...

 Regards,

 Mathieu

Hi,

can you share any time frame in which that will be available. I agree that it should be announced earlier as I know for fact that some people left Telerik because of that in search of another tool. I'm still stuck with VS 2013 and try to move to fluent but I have some issues that I need to sort like views, stored procedures, ...

With regards,

Marko

Yes, thank you for that information. I think that a timeframe of which month we can expect said tool to be available would help all of us get ready so we can all plan to integrate the package into our processes.

Thanks in advance,

Robin

Hello Robin,

We are doing our best to ship the first version of the new code generation tool in November 2015.
Still, please do not take that as firm promise as many unforeseen things can interfere with out effort. 

Regards,
Viktor Zhivkov
Telerik

Sounds great! It's nice to know when 'ish we can expect to see something.

 Thanks!

Any update on this matter as I think many of us is waiting for that tool.

Hi all,

We apologize for missing the promised release date of the code generation tool.

On our side we encountered issues that prevent us from releasing the tool as it is:
- The installation scripts we currently have are not executed correctly with NuGet Package Manager 3.0 and higher. This makes the usage of the tool hard in Visual Studio 2013 and 2015.
- There are a few known issues related to the update of the model from database, which have to be resolved in order to support the database first scenario properly.

Taking all this into account our latest estimation for a release date is January 2016.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Regards,
Data Access Team
Telerik

This is indeed quite disappointing. I knew it was to be discontinued in newer version. That's why we decided not to renew the Telerik subscriptions. But just installed VS2015 on a new environment and found out the Visual Designer 2015.1 is not working. Loved the tool for quick developing and database creation. I hope the announced tool is more than it sounds at the moment.

Perhaps continuing is possible with crowdfunding...I would love to fund it.

Hi Peter,

Thank you for your honest feedback.

The new tool will be a Powershell script distributed through NuGet packages. It will be capable of generating new fluent models and updating existing ones. Currently, its release date is set for January 2016. More information about it available in this blog post.

I hope this helps.

Regards,
Doroteya
Telerik

Any news on this?!

Hello Marko,

I am sorry but I am still unable to give you release date for the Fluent Code Generation tool.
When we have further information I will make sure to update this thread to notify you and the whole community.

Regards,
Viktor Zhivkov
Telerik

While waiting for Telerik, anyone can use my Visual Studio extension. I decided to open source it.

https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/d5834ee0-3746-4865-89b7-9c71ee93aa5a

As it is focused on our projects, not every feature is supported. But it is easy to adjust it to your project needs.

Have fun with it.

Hi Telerik Team,

Any update. We need this tool asap. Please.

On March 20, 2016 a new version of Telerik Data Access Q1 2016 has been released but still did not get Visual Designers. When it be  includes Visual Designer.

Hi Juan Daniel and Surya,

At this point the new code generation tool is still in development. What's ahead of us is to stabilize it so that it covers the necessary scenarios for generating database first fluent models from scratch. Currently, however, I am unable to provide you with a timeframe for its release.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Regards,
Doroteya
Telerik

We are doing our best to ship the first version of the new code generation tool in November 2015.
Still, please do not take that as firm promise as many unforeseen things can interfere with out effort. 

Regards,
Viktor Zhivkov
Telerik

How you doing on this 5 months past due ...

For people who can no longer wait for Telerik to release their codegen tool, an alternative has been released (albeit beta for now) by the DevArt team. It is obviously not free, but it is there...

http://blog.devart.com/entity-developer-6-0-new-orm-designer-for-telerik-data-access.html

I've downloaded a trial, and it seems to deliver as promised.

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with DevArt in any way ! I just happen to be subscribed to their newsletter, and was notified of the support of Telerik Data Access in their latest version.

I wonder if Open Access is going to become abandonware.

I'm not sure about this :(, but after I think 10 years I did not renew my subscription with Telerik, and main reason is OpenAccess.
I move forward with EF for ORM. I have also start to evaluate Syncfusion as it comes totaly free In Enterprise version for me as one developer.
What I must admit is that I really  enyoj those 10 years with superb support but last 4-5 months with this OA decision its something I dont like (I'm mostly dissappint in not giving honest answer about OA).

So for now, bye to Telerik.

Let's think about it:

Progress bought Telerik. The only overlapping item in the product portfolio is DataAccess. Telerik is not making money with it. Therefore it is no big sacrifice to kick it.

But Progress/Telerik isn't offering any alternative. No. They even stop supporting it in the MVC scaffolding. See Kenshin's answer here: http://kendoui-feedback.telerik.com/forums/127393-telerik-kendo-ui-feedback/suggestions/12251277-use-telerik-data-access-context-in-mvc-scaffolding

DataAccess is dead. I'll stick to my code generator and then switch to EF7 as soon as it's stable. EF6 is IMHO too restrictive in the supported DBs.

When you have plan to publish this tool?

Any news on this? Is DataAccess something that is still being developed or has development of this been abandoned? Can you let us know so that I can decide if I should carry on developing with this tool or just push on with EF instead.

Hello,

I am pleased to inform you that the implementation of the tool for generating new fluent models based on existing databases is ready. There's an unofficial pre-release Beta version at https://www.nuget.org/packages/Telerik.DataAccess.Fluent.CodeGeneration. You can download it and give it a try to see what we have been cooking for so long. At the time present, we are waiting to clear some formal obstacles before we can release the source code and the official first Beta version of the tool.

A bit of details:

What you can do
- create new fluent models based on existing database schemata. 
- switch between SQL type mapping (same as Add New Fluent Model wizard was using) and Backend-Independent type mapping

What is missing
- update existing Fluent Model support
- generation for Stored Procedures
- Visual Basic support

Known issues
- Only DBO (default) schema is read and mapped

Next steps for the tool are
1. Publish the source code in GitHub
2. Gather your feedback in the repository
3. Implement Update Existing Fluent Model functionality

Thank you for your patience.

Regards,
Doroteya
Telerik

Any update on this front?

Hi Anurag,

The state of the code generation tool remains unchanged. The release of the official Beta version is in progress and there are formal procedures that have to be executed. At this point though, I am unable to provide you with a concrete timeframe about the release date.

Thank you for your interest.

Regards,
Doroteya
Telerik by Progress

Hi,

I do hope you realise the damage that this issue has caused to Telerik's reputation. We have actively moved away from using your Data Access in favour of EF. It has also caused us to think twice about using your products elsewhere. We have been loyal DevCraft subscribers for some time but the way that you have handled this situation is very poor. There were many good reasons to move to VS2015 and to find that we had been abandoned by Telerik Data Access was disappointing to say the least. I know that you will claim that MS have also dropped their data designer in the latest incarnation of EF but very importantly, they still support EF6 within VS2015 with its data designer.

I feel that this was a major miscalculation on your part and the continual delays to a workaround are only confounding the problem.

Steve

Hi,

just to confirm what Steve already said. I have been loyal subscriber with Telerik for 10 years. Because of this, I abondened Telerik and now I use EF for ORM and as I'm internet programmer I swith for now on Syncfusion as they have free version (Communuty License) fro individual developers and small business.

Hi,

I agree with Steve and I'm one of those developers that were loyal to Telerik for 10 years. After this with Data Access I'm no longer subscriber to any developer tools. I turn to EF for ORM and as for programming part for now I'm using Syncfusion (their Community licence version).

Well I'm now in the same situation as many others. Have to think about to move away for a different ORM that supports at least code generation from an existing database.

I'm really not getting it with this Code First Generation thing in the ORM industry. I mean it's kind of nice for a some playground projects, but if you have a project with 200 or more tables, you probably use a designer tool to manage your database. These tools allow you to create the tables, the indexes on the columns you want, it lets you document the database, lets you create view and many things more. And it provides a graphic designer to do it and create the relations and everything.
Nobody can tell me, that anyone is capable of keeping the overview of 200 code files with DTO code.

Well I don't kneed the visual designer of OpenAccess inside Visual Studio, but I need to be able to update the model from my database, and not delivering tools for that is simply just embarrassingly from Telerik.
It is simply really poor what Telerik did here. A big change like that should be announced a year or more in advance with notification in the Warnings as deprecated.
Not doing this shows me that Progress seems to be money centered, whereas I always thought of Telerik being developer centered. And realizing this is not a good thing...

I awesome love DataAccess (btw try to do this in EF: table1.Where(row=>row.Table2.Any(row2=>row2.CreationDate.Time<=new TimeSpan(12,30,0)))  :D)

But, I can't explain my team why we need to create database from scratch(  At least, please, make a DB2Code generation tool for start

Isn't it possible to make an open source community for OpenAccess Designer tool? I hope everyone here will be more than happy to contribute.

DevArt is not comparable in any way - Telerik, Data Access is the only reason I stuck with your company and the Visual Designer saved me hundreds of hours.  Please make the change to allow the designer to work or release the code for the community to maintain it.

I am holding an old image of a machine for only this reason - as the designer is the preferred method of rapid modeling.

Yes, please provide a Designer for actual visual Studio Versions!

You might want to read this...

http://www.telerik.com/data-access-sunsetting

 

i'm crying.

At least it can be moved to open-source, no?

Well that did it. :(

How can I trust them saying they will keep supporting other components. Trust is gone and so am I. No more Telerik for me. 

I could not agree more. Open source both the data access library and the designer. There is no reason not too at this point.  

Yes, I am stunned over this. You would think such an integral piece would be shifted to github and allow the community to have an option instead of just killing it. I have used OpenAccess/DataAccess for many years and it is an integral core to our applications that is not so quickly or easily replaced. The absence of the visual designer was indeed a blow, but thanks to some clever T4 templating, not intolerable, but killing the product completely (even though they were already giving it away), just wow is all I can say.

So if anyone is listening, github.com/telerik/dataaccess please!! Allow the community to decide. (And no, continuing to use existing packages with no further updates is not really an option, and if we wanted to use Entity Framework, we already would have...)

i agree, if you have some Projects which using Data Access and on every Project 5 to 80 Tables then you can not easyly Change to another Technology. It is not like a small demo Programm.

I am also very disapointed with telerik. You Play a lot for telerik, and the Money is also for the safety to set on the right "horse", but this "telerik horse died"!

@Telerik: Please think about this; for our next Project we will think more about the question "Did telerik realy save time for us?"