Category: Blog

If you haven’t heard, SSMS v18 went GA (Generally Availability) recently. You can download it from Microsoft, though if you have a preview version, you do need to uninstall that. You also have to reboot after install

There is one cool feature that’s easy to miss, and I wanted to point it out.

Azure Data Studio

I am warming to Azure Data Studio (ADS) as an editor. I like notebooks, and I’m hopeful SQL Prompt will come soon, but it’s a nice, lightweight editor. It’s based on Visual Studio Code, and I like some things, like version control.

Others I find annoying, like the connection dialogs, the results display, trying to use the Object Explorer, and more. That means I am often still using SSMS as a primary tool to work with SQL Server.

Switching between tools is sometimes a pain, but things got easier.

SSMS Integration

With SSMS v18, there’s a small item that you may easily miss. If I right click a database, I see this:

I have the option to launch ADS with a new query or notebook. The connection context passes along, which is nice. I hate the connection dialog in ADS.

If I click “New Query”, I see this:

Hmm, an error? No, this is actually good. The connection was SQL Auth to a Linux instance. I haven’t saved the password, so the current context can’t be passed. This is a new connection, and needs to authenticate. This is what I’d expect. When I click OK, I drop into the password box.

Even if I’ve got a connection, if I go back to SSMS an open either a new query or notebook, I get the same result.

If I have a Windows Auth connection, and I right click and choose New Query, I get this:

In this case, I was connected to Plato\SQL2017 as the instance and right clicked the MLDemo database. I also had ADS closed, with the notebook tab open when it closed. ADS restored my tab and then connected to the new database.

A little thing, but a handy one that I expect more people will use over time.