You have probably seen this ad floating around the Internet. Probably see it on this very blog.
If you are already familiar with this wonderful tool, the ad makes perfect sense to you. SQL Prompt is to Management Studio as Reshaper is to Visual Studio.
Actually, the difference is even stronger. SQL Prompt is like upgrading from Notepad to Visual Studio.
I was first drawn to the tool for the “Format SQL” options. Nicely formatted code is easier to understand.
Once I got started, I found many other nice features that I have found quiet handy:
- Expand wild cards allows me to write the query as Select * from Table but still get an itemized list of columns
- Qualify object names allows me to get the Table.Column spelled out without me having to do all of the spelling.
- Uppercase keywords is fairly straight forward. I like the look but don’t always bother. Now I don’t have to.
Plus you get intellisence for your queries.
As soon as I type from, I get a list of tables:
As soon as I type on for the join, I get prompts for how the new table might be joined:
This makes it easier to crank out some SQL. Keeps it well formatted, and also helps ensure that you have the foreign keys in place since that is how SQL Prompt figures out the options for the joins.
When you write an insert statement, as soon as you type out the tablename, SQL Prompt will complete that out to the full insert with each column itemized out.
There are also a nice little snippet manager. You just type in a short key sequence and then <TAB> and the snippet associated with that sequence will be expanded. Out of the box, there are several handy snippets, but you can add your own or change the built in ones.
Give it a try, you will wonder how you ever got along without it.