Ordinarily I wouldn’t blog solely about a set of right-click options in an application, but in this Eleven Days of Festivus series I’m sharing some quick tips that have helped me in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) and SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT). When working in Management Studio, you can access several handy functions by right-clicking any open file in…
Regular expressions (or simply regex for short) have long been used by system administrators and data professionals for searching and manipulating text. Regular expressions allow the user to find, replace, and manipulate text based on the pattern they define in the expression. While every text editor allows simple search-and-replace capabilities, regex allows for searching for partial matches, using wildcards, and…
I’m a creature of habit. With the software tools that I use, I like to have everything in the same place every time, even if I’m working on a machine I don’t normally use. That’s especially true with SQL Server Management Studio, where the sheer number of buttons and options can force one to hunt for the feature they need….
Occasionally, I’ll stumble across one of those neat tricks that makes me ask myself, “Why didn’t I know about this years ago?”. This was one such discovery, and has been a huge time saver for me. Vertical Text Selection in SSMS Typically, selecting blocks of text is done in a left-to-right, top-to-bottom order. If you use your mouse to select…
I’m old enough to remember when multitasking was considered a good thing. From the same mouths that brought you “work smarter, not harder” came the advice to always be working on multiple things at once to improve efficiency. However, we’ve since learned that deep focus is more serial than parallel, and that trying to focus on multiple things at once…
The SSIS catalog is a system through which SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) packages are stored, executed, and logged. Introduced with the release of SQL Server 2016, the SSIS catalog helps to better adapt Integration Services as an enterprise-ready ETL system. In this post, I’ll share a brief introduction to the SSIS catalog, as well as links to content on…
Did you know that SQL Server Management Studio can help you arrange your SQL scripts into logical groupings? SSMS includes the ability to associate multiple code files together into projects for better clarity and ease of maintenance. In this post, I’ll show you the basics of SQL Server Management Studio script projects. SQL Server Management Studio Script Projects For those…
The weather is turning cooler, there is holiday music everywhere, and the relatives are all excited to get together and talk about politics. That can only mean one thing: it’s almost time for Festivus! For the last three years, I have spent the 11 days leading up to Festivus writing a blog post each day, and I’m delighted to continue…
One of the most underutilized assets in SQL Server Management Studio is the SSMS project. Within Management Studio, one can create code projects that make organizing SQL scripts much simpler, and more easily integrate with source control systems. In this brief post, I’ll show the essentials of using SQL Server Management Studio projects for T-SQL code management. T-SQL Code Management…
We’re all creatures of habit, and work more efficiently when we know exactly where to find the tools we need. The same holds true with digital tools, and those of us who work with SQL Server will spend a lot of time using SQL Server Management Studio. SSMS has a lot of features, but each data professional will likely use…