A Fine Slice Of SQL Server
Erik Darling wants you to vote:
Comments closedOne problem I run into regularly is when I’m tuning a query, and I want to keep one of the resulting execution plans available, so I can:
- Compare it after I make some other changes and run the query again
- Do some additional analysis without worrying about accidentally losing the plan
The only way to do that is to save the plan, stick the XML in another tool, or keep opening new query tabs to run things in, where I won’t lose the plan.
Erin Stellato announces an “above-the-fold” change:
In SSMS 20 we have made changes to the connection dialog. In the screenshot below, you will see the Login and Connection Properties pages for the connection dialogs for SSMS 19 and 20 compared side-by-side.
Moving the Connection Security section to the Login tab (and it presumably showing up without needing to select Options) is a good change. It’s also interesting to see SSMS support Mandatory encryption, a part of Tabular Data Stream (TDS) 8.0 that Azure Data Studio supports but SSMS (and most other SQL Server-related things) don’t yet.
Comments closedChad Callihan violates Betteridge’s Law of Headlines:
In case you missed it, the latest version of SQL Server Management Studio (19.3) was released on January 10th.
It’s easy to come across these types of releases being mentioned online or notice the friendly reminder pop up when opening SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS):
Read on to see why it’s worth updating to SSMS 19.3.
Comments closedWarwick Rudd has cramped environs:
Working in SQL Server Management Studio is potentially an everyday occurrence for you! And having to work with many queries open at the same time is probably the norm. Depending on the size of your screen that you may be working on, you are limited with the amount of screen real estate you can work in.
Personally, I get frustrated with having to continually go to the open query drop down window to see what queries I have open and be able to cycle through them to make my life easier and be more productive.
Warwick shows off one built-in way to solve this problem. When I was a database developer, I would have 40-50 tabs open at a time sometimes. I used Tabs Studio (commercial product but it’s not that expensive if you’re buying for yourself) to manage all of that.
Comments closedErin Stellato explains why things have to be so difficult:
If you have installed SQL Server Management Studio 19.1 or higher and encountered an Internet Explorer dialog with the message “Can’t reach this page” when trying to login using Microsoft Entra authentication (previously known as Azure Active Directory authentication), this post is for you. An example of what this error looks like is below. If you haven’t encountered this error and have no issues invoking a web browser from SSMS, then you can stop here and move on to something else! But if you’re interested, feel free to keep reading.
I think the decision that the tools team made here is the right one: default to using the system browser, but you can see the kind of problems that can cause some environments. It’s hard to write a tool intended to work in a large variety of environments, including highly secured ones.
Comments closedPieter Vanhove shares an update:
A couple of months ago we released a new version of the Always Encrypted Wizard that now supports secure enclaves and in-place encryption. With the new release of SSMS 19.2 we introduced a bunch of extra performance improvements and a big Always Encrypted Wizard enhancement. In this blog post I’m going to give you an overview of the new wizard capability and the performance improvements.
Read on to learn more about this new wizard, as well as what else the SSMS team has been working on with respect to Always Encrypted.
Comments closedVlad Drumea shares a few tips around SQL Server Management Studio:
In this post I cover my favorite SSMS tips and tricks that I’ve picked up along the years, and on which I rely on a daily basis in my workflow.
If you’re interested in my SQL Server Management Studio configuration recommendations – check this post out. This also contains how to have two rows of Query Editor tabs, so I’m not covering that here again.
You can find the latest version of SSMS on the official download page.
This is a great list of items and if you’re a daily driver of SSMS, you’ll want to check it out.
Comments closedPeter Schott prefers dark mode:
For those of us who’ve worked with SQL Server for some time, we’ve regularly used SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). In recent years, we’ve seen an increase in websites and applications offering a Dark Mode. Azure Data Studio has one built in as it’s based on the VS Code engine. SSMS is a form of the full Visual Studio IDE and offers some ability to skin, but attempts in the past to make a true dark mode have been only partially successful. Microsoft has not given us that option in SSMS as it’s been more work than they can commit to with a broad platform. So our options have been partial dark modes, which leave big portions of the interface a bright white, or just use the defaults with everything being light.
Click through to see how SQL Shades does in Peter’s estimation. As for me, I’ll stick with my light mode.
Comments closedErin Stellato has one more post for us:
In SQL Server 2022, support for backup to and restore from S3-compatible object storage was introduced, and in SSMS 19.1 we have added support for restoring from S3 for both Azure SQL Managed Instance and on-premises databases. The Select backup devices dialog now includes S3 URL in the Backup media type drop down:
This is something I like. But do click through to learn more about SSMS (spoiler: it’s not going away and there will be an SSMS 20).
Comments closedErin Stellato has a two-parter around SSMS 19.1. The first includes a small but important change:
In SSMS 19.1, the default value for Use system default web browser was changed to True. This only applies to new installations; anyone upgrading from an earlier version of SSMS 19 will need to change the option to True manually.
This means that, for new installations, clicking on a link in SSMS will no longer open in the built-in SSMS browser, which doesn’t work for a lot of newer sites.
Part 2 picks up with some additional changes:
We have heard complaints, for months, about the startup time for SSMS. Between 18.12.1 and 19.0 we made a few changes, and in 19.1 we delayed initializing the output window to also reduce startup time. Some of you noticed! Glenn Berry completed a round of testing and documented findings in his SSMS 19.1 Performance Improvements blog post. We are hoping to also gain improvement when we get to SSMS 20, so know that our work is not yet done.
Click through for the full set of chnages.
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