The beta for BIDS Helper 1.6 was just released. We have not updated the version notification just yet as we would like to get some feedback on people's experiences with the SQL 2012 version. So if you are using SQL 2012, go grab it and let us know how you go (you can post a comment on this blog post or on the BIDS Helper site itself). This is the first release that supports SQL 2012 and consequently also the first release that runs in Visual Studio 2010. A big thanks to Greg Galloway for doing the bulk of the work on this release.

Please note that if you are doing an xcopy deploy that you will need to unblock the files you download or you will get a cryptic error message. This appears to be caused by a security update to either Visual Studio or the .Net framework – the xcopy deploy instructions have been updated to show you how to do this.

Below are the notes from the release page.

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This beta release is the first to support SQL Server 2012 (in addition to SQL Server 2005, 2008, and 2008 R2). Since it is marked as a beta release, we are looking for bug reports in the next few months as you use BIDS Helper on real projects.
In addition to getting all existing BIDS Helper functionality working appropriately in SQL Server 2012 (SSDT), the following features are new...

• Analysis Services Tabular
  • Smart Diff
  • Tabular Actions Editor
  • Tabular HideMemberIf
  • Tabular Pre-Build

Fixes and Updates

• The Unused Datasets feature for Reporting Services now accounts for new features in Reporting Services 2008 R2 like Lookups and new features in Reporting Services 2012.
• SSIS: emit an informational message when a variable has an expression defined and EvaluateAsExpression = False
• SSAS: roles reports points to wrong server
• SSIS - Variable Copy / Move broken in v1.5
• "Unused DataSets Report" not showing up in Context menu on VS2005 if Solution Folders used
• SSAS Tabular: Create a UI for managing actions
• SSAS Tabular: Smart Diff improvements for new schema and Tabular models
• SSIS: Copy/Move Variable Erroring due to custom Control Flow item Icon
• SSIS Performance Visualization Index out of range
• fixing bugs in AggManager when aggregation design IDs don't match names

The exe downloads are a self extracting installer, the zip downloads allow for an xcopy deploy. Make sure to note the updated xcopy deploy instructions for SQL Server 2012.