I use SQL Server Database Projects to manage my project’s DB schema changes and keep them version controlled. I recently got a new laptop and installed SQL Server 2014 on it. When I started a new project and tried to import the new schema into Visual Studio 2013, I ran into this error: “Could not connect to the database to retrieve the configuration”
I tried a couple of things, even tried doing a Schema compare from the database to my empty project and I got another error that I didn’t really understand: “Validation error in the source: <Project Name>. Unable to determine the database platform type. The database may be unavailable.”
Since the database was definitely available, I did some more digging. Visual Studio told me that the was an updated available for database tooling:
So, I followed the instructions to get it updated and magically it all worked. So if you run into that problem and can’t figure it out, do what I should’ve done from the beginning and install the required updates!