Category: SQL Server Management Studio

Pedro Lopes gives a reason to upgrade to SSMS 17.2:

But what if I could search for node id 30 while looking at the graphical showplan?

Starting with SSMS 17.2, just use CTRL+F to start a search in graphical showplan (or right-click on a blank area of the plan, and in the context menu click on Find Node option), and you can quickly see exactly where node id 30 is:

I will have to see whether that also lets you quickly find the origin of Expr#### columns.

Bert Wagner shows how you can use the clipboard ring in SQL Server Management Studio:

Copying and pasting is a feature that’s available in nearly every text editor (“nearly” — anyone remember the days before iOS had a clipboard?).

However, SQL Server Management Studio goes above and beyond the regular copy and paste feature set — it has a clipboard ring.

What’s a clipboard ring you ask?

The clipboard ring let’s you cycle through the last 20 things you copied onto your clipboard when you go to paste in SSMS.

Read on to learn how to use the clipboard ring.  When I remember that it exists, it’s quite useful.

Kenneth Fisher talks about the default reports built into Management Studio:

As DBAs our stock in trade is information and there is certainly an impressive amount available. The diagnostic views are the most common place to get the information we need but every now and again it’s nice to get an organized/pretty view. To that end, you can write your own reports or you can use the default reports that Microsoft makes available through SSMS. There are reports at the Server, Database and Agent level.

The Disk Usage by Table report is on my go-to list.

Andrew Kelly has a few tricks up his sleeve when it comes to Management Studio shortcuts:

I was giving an internal talk on SSMS productivity trips and there were a few that I believe are seldom used but can be a real time or keystroke saver that I would like to mention. To the best of my knowledge these will work in any version of SSMS from at least 14.0 onward and likely earlier but I can’t verify older versions at this time. Since these are basically Visual Studio shortcuts they also work in Visual Studio and SSDT to the best of my knowledge. The first is the ability to select text in a vertical fashion as shown in the examples below. Before we get to how to do that I know your first question is why would you want to do that. Well I will leave all the possibilities up to you since everyone has slightly different techniques and circumstances. However I am confident that after seeing a few examples it will spark interest in many of you and you will immediately think of times when this will help you code more efficiently.

Read on for five tips.

Derik Hammer shows off some of the grid functionality in Red Gate’s SQL Prompt:

Even more common than scripting out INSERT statements, I may need to copy a set of values and format them for an IN clause. Normally I would use a text editor such as Notepad++ to reformat the multiple lines of values. SSMS can also be used but I find Notepad++’s find/replace features better.

Now I do not have to worry about copying/pasting the values and making changes. SQL Prompt delivers a direct conversion from values to IN clause.

Click through for some animated GIFs showing how to use this functionality.

Andy Leonard has a short SSMS tips post about how you can take advantage of regions in your code:

There are a few tools and add-ins that support the creation of “regions” in T-SQL code. SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) supports one way to separate sections of long-ish T-SQL scripts natively, by using begin/end:

It’s an interesting SSMS trick.