Most development shops use Visual Studio Developer Edition … then comes the time when you need to do database work and you are forced to do it outside of Visual Studio because you need schema comparison tools, data comparison tools, data generation tools, modeling tools, etc. 

Visual Studio Database Edition has some of these tools (it still lacks a modeling tool so you’re forced to go with ERWin or ER/Studio) but you have to spend an extra $2500 bucks/developer (let’s not even count the $7,000-10,000 price for Team Suite).  You can get these for far less going directly to a 3rd party vendor like RedGate ~ $1,000/developer. 

Getting information out of Microsoft has been a great pain.  Just check out some other folks sad thread here.

Anyway, as of Oct 1st, they are supposed to be allowing folks who own Developer Edition to use the Database Edition!  Check it out here (quote below in case the link goes dead):

As Microsoft sees it, the roles of the database-centric developer and "regular" developer are less distinct than they once were, so the company is merging its VSTS database and development products. As of October 1, those who belong to the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) and currently own Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition or Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition will receive for free the Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition, Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition, Visual Studio 2005 Team System for Software Developers and Visual Studio 2005 Team System for Database Professionals.

As of this morning, Oct 1st, I do not see the Database Edition available via MSDN Downloads.  Perhaps later in the day it will be available.