With the launch of SQL Server 2008 Management Studio (SSMS) a pretty sought after feature the "Intellisense" is now a built-in feature shipped with the editor. The feature dramatically improves the productivity by providing a auto complete list of table names after keying in the "FROM" keyword, similarly you will get a list of relevant column names after the "WHERE" clause. I really adore this feature; because most of the time either the table or column names are abbreviated which introduces a lot of typo as you keyin those SQL statements.
I was glad to see this Intellisense feature and decided to try it out. After downloading the installation took more time than expected, I fired up the Management Studio but to my shock, i couldn't find the Intellisense in action. After going through forums i came to realize that, this feature works only with SQL Server 2008 server and not with down-version systems (like SQLServer 2005, 2000), but unfortunately at the time of this writing i was using SQL Server 2005 server, which doomed my expectations to get a preview of this very sought after feature.
After a brief search, I came to find similar products offering the same feature; independent of SQL Server version. The first one that caught my attention was Red-Gate's SQLPrompt which provided Intellisense feature for SQL Management Studio regardless of SQL Server version. I was very much impressed by its features after going through its trial version, I really recommend it as a must to have productivity tool for any developer working with databases, but what made be pull back was its quite hefty price tag, for personal use.
Later i stumbled upon a free product named "Toad for SQLServer", after the installation i was really impressed by what it had to offer. Its packed with features, much more than i expected. I am enumerating the features shipped with this freeware.
- SQL Intellisense
- Data Export Wizard
- Code Snippets
- Auto Correct for misspelled SQL keywords.
- SQL Syntax Templates
- SQL Execution Plan
- Results Windows - Assists in Grouping, Sorting, Filtering.
- Moreover this freeware version won't get expired as Toad Oracle Freeware does.
1 comment:
Ebru.. well written... even though i really dont understand most of whats in th blog (due to my limited knowledge on things other than SQL Server), i still appreciate teh effort put in.. keep it up :D
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