Summary

By itself Visual Studio 2010 Shell (Isolated) is EOL. However if it is installed with SQL Server 2014 or SQL Server 2012 on the same machine, Microsoft has stated that the EOL date is 2024. We mark it as EOL, but technically it isn't in this situation.

According to Microsoft lifecycle policy of Visual Studio 2010, the support ended on July 14, 2020. However, if Visual Studio 2010 Shell (Isolated) or Shell (Integrated) is installed with SQL Server 2014 or SQL Server 2012, Visual Studio 2010 Shell will be supported until the end of support for SQL Server 2014 (07/09/2024) or for SQL Server 2012 (07/12/2022).

Description

The bundled edition of the Isolated Shell is supported only when integrated with the main product, and its lifecycle extends to the lifecycle duration of the main product. As such, it is of opinion that the Visual Studio Shell 2010 is simply a dependency software. This splits the standalone and bundled versions very much apart in terms of general code management, implementation, and security reporting.

Given that the vulnerable code is within a bundled component of the main server installation. The bundled version should automatically be covered by the advisories for SQL server given that this program in question is not supported outside this configuration.

Much of the information is based on the decision we took for exactly the same metadata/file problems, case scenario, and general vendor approach to handling bundled VS standalone releases seen in the HitmanPro.Alert software before [1]. The following link leads to an article that explains our decision logic.