Supporting Add-ins for Management Studio

I was searching the connect site for before posting an issue the other day and came across this

SSMS : Allow support for AddIns as in Visual Studio
https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=265567

Which I have thought would be a good idea since I first started work on BIDS Helper. So if you think it would be a good idea too, please follow the link and add your vote.

I don't think there is any chance of this feature making it into the release of SQL Server 2008, so maybe the next version (or a service pack if we are lucky).

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Wednesday, October 24, 2007 8:22 PM

Your Comments.

# re: Supporting Add-ins for Management Studio

You can write SSMS 2005 add-ins using some of the same APIs that you use for writing VS add-ins (I haven't checked 2008). The problem is they are unsupported and the APIs you have to call are undocumented (but managed in most cases so you can reflect on them). The registration process is also a bit tricky. I can provide you a working add-in that I wrote to get you started if you like. I totally agree that it would be nice if this was all supported and above-board.

Left by JosephCooney at 10/25/2007 7:09 AM

# re: Supporting Add-ins for Management Studio

Yeah, I have seen some code that someone got working, but I would be interested to see another implementation. As you say, the registration was the tricky part. It's frustrating that the functionality is there, it's just been hidden. Hopefully we can get this supported and get the registration process opened up.