Welcome to Visual Studio 2022 17.8 Preview 3! This release is dedicated to addressing community-submitted feedback where we resolved nearly 100 Developer Community tickets. Our primary focus was improving stability and reliability while also introducing a few new features.


Productivity
 

Visual Studio Update Notification
Did you notice something new? For Visual Studio 2022, we added an overlay to the VS taskbar icon to help you know when VS will update. When there is an update available, and you have enabled the “Update on Close” option, the icon will appear. Once you close VS, an update will immediately start, and as a result, the icon will also disappear. For more information on Update on Close, please visit VS Update on Close.



C++ Game Dev
 

Unreal Engine Macro Specifier Suggestions
You will now see Unreal Engine macro specifiers suggested in the member list, making it easier to understand and use them in your code. This feature will save you time and effort by providing quick access to important information about macro specifiers without having to leave the IDE.



Structured Diagnostics
C++ compiler errors can be long and unwieldy. To address this, we’ve created a new Problem Details window, which allows you to navigate compiler errors in a structured way. The Problem Details window can be opened by clicking the Details icon for an entry in the Error List.



Entries in the Problem Details window can be expanded to view nested information about the error from the compiler.



MDS 3.0 to MDS 5.0 Upgrade in SQL Server Data Tools
SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) has upgraded from (Microsoft.Data.SQLClient)MDS 3.0 to MDS 5.0. MDS 5.0 has some significant benefits over MDS 3.0. It has added support to TDS 8.0, support for specifying Server SPN and Failover Server SPN on the connection, etc. Please refer to this blog for more information on the benefits of the upgrade.

For SSDT users, the major change that can be noticed is while connecting to a database. Two new fields, namely Encrypt and Trust Server Certificate, have been added to the Connect Page. This specifies the Encryption type and the requirement for a Trust Server Certificate. By default, the Encrypt is set as true or Mandatory. You can find details about this in our Microsoft Learn Documentation.