SQLPrompt | "You are the CEO of your destiny"

This guy looks just like me a few weeks ago only one difference…..he has hair!!! Okay seriously though, I felt just like this guy not long ago and the reason for this was due to the fact I have become accustomed to specific tools and utilities that I utilize on a daily basis. Is this a good thing, eh, maybe or maybe not but end of the day I like to be efficient, dynamically nimble (if that is an expression), and in control of what my work entails daily.

Now, leading up to this extraordinary blog post you have to understand something. I’m in a RedGate shop pampered with some very nice utilities at my disposal. One such utility is their SQL Prompt utility.

One of the nice features I like about the utility is the recover tab within SSMS that shows me past history of tabs I had open within SQL. Can I tell you how many times this has come in handy? If that doesn’t meet your fancy then how about the code snippets that you can save and reuse later, or maybe the nice IntelliSense it provides while coding.

This leads me into why I looked like our Data Professional up above…..I recently was without my SQL Prompt and you thought I’d been taken back to the stone ages. I went to type out some code and low and behold nothing, I got NOTHING. No tables popping up; no columns to review…..nothing. After the sheer shock and awe subsided I knew I was in for a long day. Needless to say it didn’t take me long to figure out what went wrong with my prompt and how to get it back.

What’s this mean for you guys who are reading this? Glad you asked.

Red Gate’s new version is out so go check it out. Some of the new enhancements are noted below:

Execute current statement
Insert semicolons
Code highlighting
Use object definition case
Rename variables and aliases
Suggestions improvements
Qualify object names improvements
Remove square brackets
Nullability of columns
Choose environments to install to
New formatting options
New tab history options
Improved loading dialog box
Support for restricted accounts
Various usability improvements
Many bug fixes

So download the free trial and test drive it; what do you have to lose? Maybe you’ll like it and maybe you won’t but don’t wait and let time go by when you could be becoming more efficient in your everyday work.

If you use the product already drop me a line; if you don’t use the product then tell me why not.

Everything. If you’ve never had the opportunity to use Red Gates SQL prompt utility then you are missing out. Recently, I went without it for a day by some circumstances that I decided to create for myself. Of course these actions were not intentional but then it got me thinking somewhat on if I was stranded on a desert SQL island what would be the one utility I would want most in my survivor tool belt.

I posed this question over at SQL Brit’s Forum (if you haven’t been over there yet check it out; there is some good stuff going on over there) and got some really good responses back.

Back to the subject at hand, SQL Prompt, and why do I like it so much. I am a heavy Red Gate user; have their bundle and enjoy using all their utilities. Makes my job a lot easier; one of these is SQL Prompt.

What Is SQL Prompt?

SQL Prompt is an add-in for SSMS and Visual Studio, and according to Red Gate, has been designed to strip away the repetition of coding.

Features

There are many features about SQL Prompt but I won’t cover all of them. I want to focus on just a few that have helped me tremendously fight the good DBA fight.

Summarize Script Option – as you can see below the script that is in the query window for my test database called release I have 3 insert statements. If I had a very huge query I was working with, or perhaps even going through highlights of an SP I can get a quick summary of what I’m dealing with:

If you click on one of the Insert Scripts you will see that it is highlighted in your query window for quick review:

Just how do you get to this Summarize Script Option? If you look at your toolbar inside SSMS you will see the SQLPrompt option available. From there it is as simple as selecting the summarize script feature:

Snippets – these are nice hot keys to allow you to get to code quicker. You can save your own snippets for frequently used code. For example some of the snippets that are quick to learn are

SSF which is select * from
DF which is delete from
CT which is create table
II which is insert into

The list and possibilities could go on but the mere fact of having this at my finger tips has cut down on a lot of coding and “repetition” that occurs on a daily basis.

Conclusion

What I’ve shared are just two features that SQL Prompt has to offer and we haven’t even begun to scratch the service. The more I think on it the more I believe I will be doing an in depth over view of my bundle. I believe I have features that I am not taking full advantage of that are at my disposal.

Just this utility alone has formatting short cuts, navigation short cuts (Summarize Script is Ctrl+B, Ctrl+S), Code-completion Shortcuts, Refactoring, and much more.

Check out SQLPrompt for more information at RedGates website.

What’s your go to utility? If you were stranded on a SQL Desert island what would you want to have with you that you could not survive without?