Management Studio with SQL Server 2000
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Comments posted to this topic are about the content posted at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/rfarley/managementstudiowithsqlserver2000.asp
Rob Farley
LobsterPot Solutions & Adelaide SQL Server User Group
Company: http://www.lobsterpot.com.au
Blog: http://blogs.lobsterpot.com.au -
I know there are plenty of things that I didn't mention in the article. The plan was to help persuade people who are still using the SQL2K tools to consider switching.
Rob Farley
LobsterPot Solutions & Adelaide SQL Server User Group
Company: http://www.lobsterpot.com.au
Blog: http://blogs.lobsterpot.com.au -
It's still not as good as TOAD or TOra for Oracle, but it's loads better than Enterprise Mgr. One thing that seems to be missing, though... if you do any data manipulation directly on a table, it doesn't seem to commit your changes nor provide an obvious way to do so, but maybe I'm wrong.
- Thanks for the article. I love Management Studio and use it with SQL 2000 extensively. The text and file searching is great. I think my favorite feature is the ability to design views with case statements that show in the table design window. EM would not render complicated views, especially ones with case statements.So what's not to like. It is definitely more of a memory hog, which comes with the extra bells and whistles. I still prefer Query Analyzer for lean, mean object viewing and SQL coding. I miss seeing the execution time for views in the bottom status bar (QA). I also miss the ability to create a drop and create (QA). Currently, this is a two step process (UGHHHH). I appreciate the SourceSafe integration, but it has been a little tedious to use. Not as simple as right-click and check in unless you setup a database integration project. And there's not much documentation on this subject. If someone has good experience in this area, can you please write an article for us.Microsoft is fairly consistent with bringing out a product redesign and scrapping some of the better (and I guess, lesser known) features. Can someone please buy them some Requirements Management software?
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I agree Management Studio is a step in the right direction. Let's hope it's more stable than EM.
A couple things I wish they would have carried over from EM:
OBJECT SEARCH
What a handy tool. Why on Earth would they drop this? Sure, you can use the INFORMATION_SCHEMA views, but it was nice not to have to crank out a new select statement each time I want to find all the occurrences of "InvoiceNumber" in a db.
Also gone is the ability to copy a table from EM, paste it into QA and have the Create Table statement done for you. Not the end of the world, but it was handy.
Maybe they will add these back in one day?
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I agree that Management Studio gives more interactive features than EM. But....
What would be the option for a Visual Studio 1.x developer with ASP.NET projects, to use SQL 2005 and its Management Studio (or even SQL 2000 with Management Studio) to avoid .Net framework 1.x and 2.0 problems...?
Is there any way to avoid installation of .Net Framework 2.0 to use at least Management Studio (even without SQL 2005)..?
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You shouldn't have any problems with SQL2005 and VS1.x. I still use VS2003 for quite a few projects, and I've never had any conflicts between .Net 1.1 and 2.0.
Rob Farley
LobsterPot Solutions & Adelaide SQL Server User Group
Company: http://www.lobsterpot.com.au
Blog: http://blogs.lobsterpot.com.au -
Maybe it's just me but I find the combination of the issues below make it unusable. I have reverted back to SQL2k QA after several thwarted attempts to use Man Studio successfully. (I am a database developer using SQL 2000)
You can't change the default scripting options as mentioned earlier in this thread. QA had the ability to switch on and off DROP object scripts and permissions scripts when you script a CREATE object. Man Studio won't let you change any options for scripting a single object (from the object browser tree) as far as I can see. I also don't want the USE statement for every object that I script but you can't turn this off either. I find myself continually cutting and pasting just to get what you could easily tailor in QA.
The text editor is now like VS but for me this is just a further annoyance. If you press Shift + Home QA (and pretty much every other text editor that I've used) will highlight the whole of the current line. Man Studio "cleverly" highlights from the first character. Whereas this is useful in VS when there is a lot of indenting it has little or no value (for me) in writing T-SQL.
If anyone knows how to change this behaviour I'll more than grateful if you can point me in the right direction.
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One thing Management Studio can't do is edit table-valued functions from SS2000 databases. I have to go back to EM for that.
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>> A couple things I wish they would have carried over from EM:
>> OBJECT SEARCH
The only replacement I have found equivalent to the Object Search in EM is by using the filters in the Object Explorer window; however, this is fairly anemic compared with the original object search. I have not found a way to extend the properties in the Filter Settings, as you only can filter on Name, Schema, or Creation Date. The dialog does not appear very extensible, as the property settings are bundled into the ObjectExplorer.dll, so this would be another request to dear Microsoft. It would be nice to filter on date modified to see your recent changes, etc.
Also, while we're still griping a little, I do miss QA's ability to start the server when connecting to a new database. Not a production thing, just more of a development issue because I maintain so many different copies of SQL Servers on my machine, that I do not start them all by default. I find myself jumping back to SQL2K Service Manager to start the database engines, which at least it can crank up 2005 db's.
- Nice short article.Unfortunately Management Studio runs like a dog on my PC so I still use QA quite a lot.Also, in a Master/Target server scenario, the master server has to be SQL 2000. You can't enlist a SQL 2000 server with a SQL 2005 master, but vice versa works.I'd also be interested in how many 'developers' use Management Studio now that Visual Studio 2005 Team System for Database Developers is out in the wild.
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Colt 45 - the original point and click interface
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You can set the options to comment in the options pane - set it back to the old shiftctrl C if you want.
Oh - and btw - to UNComment (or Restore) text, try shiftctrl+R...
Now, how do we adjust the size of the results pane (ctrlB...?)
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Also you can't hide/show query results. There is a button for that in QA.
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I say, unless you are using SQL 2005, don't switch. The new tools got a TON of bugs. What happened to the "script database objects" feature? I gotta do it all separately per object now? Why does SSMS not save my password change when I change the password for the login on SQL Agent Properties / Connections? Why does SSMS use so much damn memory on my machine, and leak memory too?
My advice: Stay with EM until Microsoft fixes SSMS a bit more. SSMS is a powerful tool, just not a quality powerful tool.... at least yet.
A.J.
DBA with an attitude -
There's a button in MgmtStudio as well, but you need to customise your toolbar and add it. It's something of a large button, and it says quite clearly "Hide Results Pane".
As to bugs, our DBA has put the kybosh on using it with SQL2K databases/servers, due to it's not being designed for/tested with SQL2K. I can see some merit in this thought.
For me though, Management Studio was just one of the Three Amigos, along with EM and QA. I used the tool best suited.
S.
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