Category: Azure Data Studio

Alan Yu announces a new version of SQL Operations Studio:

Take a moment to breathe, this is a loaded update.

The March Public Preview release is focused on improving our Extensibility story and continuing to address top GitHub issues. This includes enabling Extension Manager, improving the Manage Dashboard experience and providing a couple Insights extensions. Please see the following details.

• Enhance the Manage Dashboard extensibility model to support tabbed Insights and Configuration panes

• Dashboard Insights extensions for sp_whoisactive from whoisactive.com and a Server Reports example

• Extension Manager enables simple acquisition of 1st-party and 3rd-party extensions

• Add additional Extensibility APIs for connection and objectexplorer management

• Community Localization open for 10 languages

• Continue to fix important customer impacting GitHub issues

There’s some nice stuff in this release, but the big story is around extensibility.

Drew Furgiuele is building a bridge to nowhere in SQL Operations Studio:

So when I sat down to write noWHERE, the concept seemed simple enough: I’ll code some text parsing into extension.js to look at the editor window’s text and look for UPDATE and DELETE statements and then try to see if there’s a missing WHERE clause. Seems reasonable enough, right? Except writing a SQL parser isn’t really something I want to do (or would be ABLE to do, frankly).

Since the module is written in JavaScript, I can leverage node.js modules to do most of the work for me. In this case, I downloaded a module called sqlite-parser. It’s a barebones, no-frills SQL syntax parser. It doesn’t support any dialect-specific stuff for T-SQL, but for this initial project, I only really care about ANSI UPDATE and DELETE statements.

There’s also a T-SQL parser available via Powershell, though I suppose that one isn’t directly available within SqlOps.  One thing that would make this really good would be to intercept the execute operation and pop up a warning dialog if there’s no WHERE clause.  There are some third-party tools which do this for Management Studio and a gate like that really saves you in the event of an emergency.

Ahmad Yaseen demonstrates how to configure SQL Operations Studio as well as writing queries with it:

To customize your connection, click the Advanced button that provides a large number of options that can help you to draw a specific type of connection. For example, you can specify the application workload type when connecting to the server by setting the Application Intent option. You can also override the default Connect Timeout setting, the SQL Server Current Language, the default Column Encryption Setting for all commands on the connection, the Encrypt option to use the SSL encryption for all data sent between the client and the server if there is an installed certificate, Persist Security Info to prevent returning the password as a part of the connection, and use the SSL encryption although there is no certificate in the server by enabling the Trust Server Certificate.

You can also use the Advanced options to specify the number of attempts to restore connection and the delay between attempts using Connect Retry Count and Connect Retry Interval. In addition, you will be able also to specify the maximum and the minimum number of connections allowed in the pool with the ability to force that the connection object is drawn from the appropriate pool, and the minimum amount of time for that connection to live in the pool using Load Balance Timeout. The Failover Partner option allows you to provide the name of the SQL Server instance that acts as a failover partner. You can control the size of the network packets used to communicate with the SQL Server instance using the Packet Size option.

It’s interesting to see just how much you can configure in the tool.

Alan Yu announces the February release of SQL Operations Studio:

The February release includes several major repo updates and feature releases, including:

• Added Auto-Update Installation feature
• Added Connection Dialog ‘Database’ Drop-down
• Added functionality for new query tabs keeping active connection
• Fixed bugs in SQL Editor and auto-completion

For complete updates, refer to the Release Notes.

Auto-update, something that Management Studio and Power BI don’t do.

Alan Yu announces a new release of SQL Operations Studio:

The January release includes several major repo updates and feature releases, including:

• Enable the HotExit feature to automatically reopen unsaved files.

• Add the ability to access saved connections from Connection Dialog.

• Set the SQL editor tab color to match the Server Group color.

• Fix the broken Run Current Query command.

• Fix the broken pinned Windows Start Menu icon.

Click through for the download link.

Samir Behara shows how to differentiate environments with custom tab colors:

The initial January release insiders build focuses on bug fixes and minor feature improvements. One thing which caught my attention was the ‘SQL Editor Tab Color‘ to differentiate between query tabs inside the IDE.

Using Custom Color to differentiate between environments is one of my favorite feature inside SQL Server Management Studio. The color is displayed in the SSMS status bar, at the bottom. Hence when you connect with a particular environment, it uses the same assigned color. This presents a visual indication of the environment in which you are running your scripts. Lot of 3rd Party tools from RedGate and ApexSQL also has their own versions of setting different colors while connecting to different environments.

Using environment-specific color schemes can be a life-saver.

Marlon Ribunal demonstrates how to build a widget in SQL Operations Studio:

This is where SQL Operations Studio (SOS) comes in the picture. SOS is a lightweight, cross-platform client. It is also open-source. Aside from its IDE functionalities, SOS has a lot of more offerings for DBAs, Devs, and DevOps. One of these is that you can use it as a dashboard to monitor your databases. SSMS comes with standard reports as well as custom reports using Report Definition Language or RDL (which is essentially an SSRS-like report residing in SSMS). SQL Operations Studio raised the bar in this regard. You can create multiple widgets to display on your dashboard.

Click through for a demonstration and screen shots.

Alan Yu announces the December release of SQL Operations Studio:

Download SQL Operations Studio and review the Release Notes to get started.

SQL Operations Studio is a data management tool that enables you to work with SQL Server, Azure SQL DB and SQL DW from Windows, macOS and Linux. To learn more, visit our GitHub.

While it’s downloading, check out the new bits and also Marek Masko’s guide on SQL Operations Studio:

If you find Go to Definition feature very useful, but you would like to have a more temporary view of objects source code, then no problem! SQL Ops Studio delivers second functionality which gives you the possibility to check object definition. This time, the source code is displayed in the same editor tab.

Marek’s post went up before the December release, so one big point (about not being able to see actual execution plans) is now fixed.