Friday, June 24, 2005 - Posts

Cool things in SQL2005 1 - 5 The editor

1. Colour
So we all know that colour coding code really helps readability, however we all at some point want to print some code out to review, stick on the wall etc, only to get black and white from QA.
Now you get full colour print outs. So get that mamouth SP print it out and produce some modern art

2. Cut and paste
This now maintains both the font of the text being cut as well as the colour
So your word documents can contain the same colour coded, formated SQL that you get in Management Studio

3. Brace highlighting
Ever had the mamouth query with conditional outer joins, sub queries, derived tables and got lost on whether you should but the 4th or 5th brace at a certain point. Well now the brackets will turn bold to show you the matched pair. (This does only seem to happen when you are on the right of the brace and you press delete)
if the cursor is located on the left of a brace pressing CTRL+] will move the cursor to the matching brace. CTLR + SHIFT + ] or CTRL + } will highlight everything enclosed in the braces.

4. Tabs
As previously talked about all your queries can be displayed in different tabs in SMS. This enables easy navigation between the queries. There is also a button on the left end of the tabs that when clicked lisst all the queries as another way of selecting one

5. Full Screen
Ever wanted more space to right your queries. Whey not try full screen mode SHIFT + ALT + ENTER
This hides, all but the essentials for righting a query.

Most of these are due to the fact that SSMS is based on Visual Studio so most of the nice editor features of VS are present in SSMS.

There are some many little great things that productivity is going to eventually increase but initially probably descrease while you find them all and see if you like them. :)