Tag: QuickTips

I love SQL Prompt, and think it’s a great productivity tool. Even before I worked at Red Gate, I love the tool and had a copy before Red Gate bought the technology from the original developer. Recently I’ve run into a few people that weren’t aware of some of the ways in which it can help you. This is a quick look at one of the ways I use SQL Prompt.

Lower Case Keywords

One of the things that many developers like is lower case keywords. If you examine some C# code, you’ll often find that they have keywords in lower case. For example, here’s a sample from MSDN.

// versioning.cs
// CS0114 expected
public class MyBase 
{
   public virtual string Meth1() 
   {
      return "MyBase-Meth1";
   }
   public virtual string Meth2() 
   {
      return "MyBase-Meth2";
   }
   public virtual string Meth3() 
   {
      return "MyBase-Meth3";
   }
}

When I’ve gotten projects from Red Gate, I see something similar.

However, if I enter some code in Management Studio, by default, SQL Prompt will format it like this:

Notice the upper case keywords. Personally I like these, but many developers may not. Fortunately there’s an easy fix. Access the SQL Prompt menu in Management Studio and select options (circled below).

This will bring up the options dialog. Select the CASE item as shown below.

On the upper right side, you’ll notice that you have drop downs for keywords, built-in functions and data types. By default these are all set to uppercase. However you have a number of choices.

I’ll change mine to lowercase, click OK, and then reformat my code. I now see this.

Quick and easy, and I can now read code that looks more like what developers are used to. Maybe I’ll leave things set like this…

You can see a complete list of SQL Prompt tips at Redgate.

I love SQL Prompt, and think it’s a great productivity tool. Even before I worked at Red Gate, I love the tool and had a copy before Red Gate bought the technology from the original developer. Recently I’ve run into a few people that weren’t aware of some of the ways in which it can help you. This is a quick look at one of the ways I use SQL Prompt.

Ugly Code

It’s often that I’ll get code submitted at SQLServerCentral, or it will come in a demo from Red Gate, and it will look something like this:

This is actually code from Microsoft in the AdventureWorks 2008 sample database. It’s ugly and hard to read. In fact, I struggle trying to interpret code when I see it like this.

Reformatting

One of the things I probably do most often, after SSF, is reformat code so that I can read it. I have a few settings I prefer, but to apply them, I’ll click CTRL+K, then CTRL+Y and my code will get fixed.

If I have invalid SQL, Prompt will throw an error and there will be a squiggle line under the offending sections. If I only want to reformat a portion of code, I can highlight it before hitting the shortcut.

I love SQL Prompt, and think it’s a great productivity tool. Even before I worked at Red Gate, I love the tool and had a copy before Red Gate bought the technology from the original developer. Recently I’ve run into a few people that weren’t aware of some of the ways in which it can help you. This is a quick look at one of the ways I use SQL Prompt.

SSF

I probably type SSF more than any other character combination in SMSS. With SQL Prompt installed, I usually quickly type “SSF” and hit “tab” and get this:

 

SQL Prompt has expanded my “SSF” into “Select * From” and then popped up a list of tables in this database. I could down arrow to select one, or use the cursor, or start typing.

This is a quick way to get data from a table back to your SSMS client without worrying about the columns or rows you need from a table. I use this constantly, though I’ve edited this command to return the top 10 rows only. Here’s how I do that:

Snippet Manager

There’s a dialog for managing these snippets of code, called the Snippet Manager. You can access that from the SQL Prompt menu

Once you select this, you get a dialog that shows all the snippets installed on your system. I scrolled down to the “SSF” snippet that I often use.

 

 

 

If I click the Edit button, then I get a small editor where I can paste in code or edit what’s there. In this case, I add the “TOP 10” keywords, and I also reformat the code slightly. I like my code formatted, so I ensure it’s formatted here.

 

 

Once that’s done, I click “Save” and then “close” for the Snippet Manager. Then the next time I type “SSF” and tab, I get this:

 

  

Note that there is an st100 snippet that does the same thing I edited with 100 rows, but I find ssf easier to type, so I just edit this snippet.

I’d encourage you to play around with snippets, and also adopt this in your daily work. If you don’t have a copy of SQL Prompt, download the evaluation and I’m sure you’ll realize it’s worth the cost of the tool in time savings quickly.