Become a T-SQL Hero with SQL Prompt

Since 1999, Red Gate Software has produced ingeniously simple and effective tools for over 500,000 technology professionals worldwide. From their HQ in Cambridge UK, they create a number of great tools for MS SQL Server, .NET, and Oracle. The philosophy of Red Gate is to design highly usable, reliable tools that solve the problems of DBAs and developers.

Every year Red Gate selects a number of active and influential community members (such as popular blog writers and community site owners) as well as SQL and .NET MVPs who are experts in their respective fields, to be part of the Friends of Red Gate (FORG) program. I’m proud to announce that I’m part of the 2014 FORG selection. This post is a part of a series of post, in which I try to explain and show you why the tools of Red Gate are so loved by the community.

 
What SSMS misses
The tool that Microsoft provides you with when you install SQL Server is pretty nice. It’s nicely designed (even though I’ve heard other opinions), it’s stable, and it does what it should do: it allows you to administer your servers. But that’s not the only thing that it should do in my opinion. If you take a look at Visual Studio as an example, that studio contains more options that helps developers do their job. And remember, SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) is actually a Visual Studio instance with a different layout (just check the Ssms.exe.config)…

So why doesn’t SSMS have a schema compare option, like Visual Studio has? Visual Studio is no longer the environment that is used only by developers that work with ASP.NET and C#, but it evolved to much more the last few years. It’s now the tool for working with Data Quality Services (DQS) and SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS). So let’s talk about some other features that SSMS misses in my opinion, and let’s see how SQL Prompt can fill that gap.

 
IntelliSense
SSMS ships with a default intelliSense, but this isn’t an implementation that I would like to see. It misses a few vital features. For example, the fact that SSMS IntelliSense doesn’t take relations between objects into account, is one of the biggest shortcomings. One of the companies that created a tool to fix that is Red Gate. If you install SQL Prompt, you get IntelliSense 2.0, or IntelliSense on steroids if you like.

When you installed SQL Prompt, it gives you suggestions when you write a JOIN clause. This means that it scans column names, and traces primary- and foreign key relationships on the tables you are joining. The join suggestion based on keys can be recognized by the little key symbol in front of it:

 
Object discovery
Whenever you’re working in a database, and you’re writing your queries, there comes a point that you can’t remember a column name or datatype. In SSMS you need to navigate the object explorer to the object (let’s say a table), and generate a create script, or click on the table to get to the column list. SQL Prompt allows you to hover your mouse over an object, and see some extra information:

 
If you click on the popup, you’ll get another popup window with the creation script (by default), or a summary of the object:

 
Scripting options
Whenever you need to script an object, or want to see the contents of for example a Stored Procedure, you need to navigate to the object in your object explorer. With SQL Prompt, you can also use the mouse context menu to script objects. Just right-click an object you referenced in your query, and choose the “Script Object as ALTER” option:

 
This will generate an alter script for the object you selected. This makes it a lot easier to see the contents of a Stored Procedure or View, and change it when needed.

 
Useful functions
The last feature I want to show you is the menu of SQL Prompt. This shows you another set of useful tools and functions. For example, how do you format your T-SQL query? SQL Prompt can do that for you with a few mouse clicks, or if you press the hotkey combination. Another great feature is the “Find Unused Variables and Parameters”. This saves you time when you try to find out which declared variables you don’t use anymore, in a very large query. All of these options can be found in the SQL Prompt menu:

 
If you want, you can also create a style-export for all your colleagues, so your entire department or company formats queries according to the same layout. You can find out more about this in the SQL Prompt menu, under Options -> Format -> Styles. You can export your formatting options as a .sqlpromptstyle file, or import one.

 
Is it worth it?
If you would ask me, my answer would be: yes! Even though it’ll cost you about €285,- (or $390,-), it’s definitely worth it. It saves you a lot of time, and it adds a lot of useful (and needed) features to SSMS.

If you want to try it out, just go to Red-Gate.com, or the product site for SQL Prompt. You can download a trial there that contains all features, for a limited time.

 
If you want to read more about this topic, don’t forget to check out these blog posts:

– Julie Koesmarno: Clean And Tidy SQL With SQL Prompt
– Mickey Stuewe: Becoming a SQL Prompt Power User
– Chris Yates: SQL Prompt – The Power Within

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