Tag: 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.

Aliases

Aliases are used to make code more readable, and shorten the amount of code that one needs to write. Typically we use these to give a short name to a table. Instead of:

We could use an alias. Note the “p” after the table below and the change in the column list.

Automated Aliases

SQL Prompt can automate aliases for me. Under the Options dialog, there is an Aliases selection (shown below).

Note that I’ve checked the “Assign Aliases” box. This is not checked by default, but once I check it, I get aliases. Let me write a query.

I’m about to select my Orders table from the Prompt drop down. Once I click Tab, I’ll get this:

SQL Prompt has added the alias for me. It’s a lower case “o”. If I add another table:

I hit tab at this point and I get:

I have a new alias of “o2”. Not terribly creative, but it works.

I have some options for changing these around. Suppose I want to make these upper case to stand out. I can change this in options:

Now I add a third table:

I hit tab:

My new alias is an upper case “P” for the Product table. That gives me a bit of differentiation for my tables.

I, however, do not like the “AS” keyword. I typically just space my alias after the table. I can change that in options:

I’ve unchecked the box and now I add a new table.

When I hit Tab, I’ll get a new alias, upper case, but no AS.

These are not terribly intuitive aliases, but this does at least clean up your code a bit, so when you see all the column names they aren’t spread way to the right with table names like “ProductDescriptions”.

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.

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.