At my presentation on SQL Server Management Studio at SQL Saturday in Exeter I promised to write some articles on Gethyn’s blog about the bits I didn’t manage to cover.

SSMS is a fantastic tool but many people and companies have found ways to enhance it to make it even more useful.
At the Exeter SQL Saturday I was chatting with David Atkinson of Red Gate software about their add-ons to SSMS.

David told me about an exciting project that Red Gate have started called the SSMS Ecosystem Project. They have created a framework to make it easier for developers and DBAs to develop, share and manage SSMS add-ons.
And the best news is that this framework is free.

Once you’ve created your add-in using the framework you can place it on their add-in directory so others can find and try it out. Red Gate are happy for you to use their API to create commercial tools as well as free ones.
Red Gate consider this to be a work in progress, they intend to enhance their API and hope to create a distribution platform similar to the Visual Studio gallery where you will be able to discover and share your add-ons.

Check it out at http://www.red-gate.com/ssmsecosystem

We also came up with quite a list of add-ons which are available on the Internet, some free and some commercial

http://www.red-gate.com/
Red Gate’s own set of tools: SQL Search, SQL Source Control, SQL Prompt, SQL Test

http://www.devart.com/dbforge/sql/sqlcomplete/
SQL Code formatter

http://www.sqlcodeguard.com
Provides fast and comprehensive static analysis for T-Sql code, shows code complexity and objects dependencies. (Now using SSMS Ecosystem Project)

http://www.ssmsboost.com
A set of productivity tools to speed-up daily tasks of SQL DBA and T-SQL developers.

http://www.supratimas.com
Adds a tab next to the SSMS Plan Explorer with its own improved version
It also has a browser-based analysis tool for SQL Server query execution plans.

http://www.ssmstoolspack.com/
by Mladen Prajdic A whole list of useful features to improve productivity

http://www.sqlsentry.net/plan-explorer
A SQL Server Query Plan Analysis tool

SQL Scripts
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Scripts/
This brings thousands of useful community SQL scripts to SSMS.

SQL Treeo
http://www.sqltreeo.com/wp/
Enables users to create custom folders for databases, stored procedures, tables, views and user defined functions
This is not an exhaustive list. I expect there are plenty of other tools available. Let us know if you have a favourite