Tag: SQL Server Management Studio (page 1 of 1)

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April 16, 2024 / 0 Comments

Two Useful Keyboard Shortcuts for SSMS

Welcome to another coffee break post where I quickly write up something on my mind that can be written and read in less time than a coffee break takes.

This morning I was doing my normal work when I had a realization that I should share something I find super useful and use frequently use in SSMS that a lot of developers seem to not know about. They are small actions but they make your life easier when doing a lot of query editing in SSMS.

How to Minimize the Results Window

I have told many developers about this keyboard shortcut and they all appreciated it. I’m sure most people that frequently work in SSMS would like to be able to minimize and maximize the results window as needed in order to give themselves more screen real estate to work with while coding but still be able to see their query results as needed. But there is no minimize button for the results window of SSMS.

The only way that I know of to minimize and then maximize the results window in SSMS is to do CTRL + R. I use this keyboard shortcut every day at work while writing queries or updating existing queries.

How to Refresh the Intellisense

I have also had to tell many developers about updating the intellisense suggestions of SSMS since it will often trip them up if they don’t know how it works. First, you should understand that the intellisense offered by SSMS is only accurate as of the time you opened your query window or changed the connection for the query window (usually). If you’ve been working in the same query window for a while and have made DDL changes to any tables, functions, stored procedures, etc., intellisense is likely out of date and could tell you that a table or column you’re trying to reference doesn’t exist when you know it does.

If you ever run into this situation where it’s telling you something doesn’t exist but you know it does, use CTRL + SHIFT + R and the intellisense suggestions/corrections will be updated.

Bonus shortcut for Red-Gate SQL Prompt

Similar to the intellisense built in to SSMS, if you are using the SQL Prompt tool from Red-Gate, you can run into the same issue with the tool not recognizing that objects or columns exist when you know that they do. If you run into that issue and would like to update the suggestions list for SQL Prompt, use CTRL + SHIFT + D.

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March 5, 2024 / 0 Comments

Getting SQL Prompt to Prompt on RDS Servers

This may seem like a ridiculous thing to need to write about, making the Red-Gate tool SQL Prompt generate prompts like it should, but I have been having a weird issue with it over the past couple months and have finally learned the solution. So of course I thought I should share it!

What is SQL Prompt?

SQL Prompt is a tool made by Red-Gate that works as a much cleaner, nicer, and more useful autocomplete feature for SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). It is a plugin you install to SSMS that then seems to magically work to help you write queries faster. Not only does this tool autocomplete databases, schemas, tables, and column names for you in your queries, but it also provides a lot of other useful tools like a Snippets Manager, which allows you to use default and custom snippets to write code faster (e.g. writing “sf” then pressing Tab will type out “SELECT * FROM” for you so all you need to type is the table name you want to select from).

Every developer in my organization uses this tool heavily in our day-to-day operations while writing any SQL scripts because it makes writing queries so much faster. So when my SQL Prompt seemed to stop working after an update, I was getting really frustrated because it meant I had to write all of my SQL queries manually again. And when all you do all day is write SQL, that adds up to a significant hindrance to your work speed.

My Problem

The problem I was having with SQL Prompt was that when I connected to any of our RDS database instances, the tool would no longer do any prompting of schemas, tables, or columns which was making my coding life so much harder. Oddly, the snippets manager portion of the tool was still working fine, so at least I wasn’t needing to type out the queries I normally use the snippets shortcuts for. Also oddly, Prompt would work perfectly fine connecting to other databases that weren’t on RDS instances, it was only happening for RDS databases.

I dealt with this issue for months on our production server, since I figured it was due to the security settings or something else I wouldn’t be able to fix, and I don’t access prod servers very frequently, so when I did use them and the Prompt wasn’t working, it wasn’t as bothersome. But after I had to completely reset my developer computer and reinstalled SQL Prompt, I started having this same issue for our lower environment databases, that I work with every day, so Prompt not prompting was suddenly a big deal.

The Solution

I created a support ticket with Red-Gate since I’ve always had good luck with their support services. This time wasn’t any different. Within a couple hours of creating the ticket, I had an email from a support rep asking me if I had tried checking the “Trust Server Certificate” check box on the Connection Properties tab while connecting to the RDS servers. No, I had not done that because I did not know that was an option before that day.

I disconnected from the RDS server then reconnected, making sure to check that box before clicking “Connect”, and now I had SQL Prompt back up and working, providing prompts of schemas, tables, and columns just like I want it to. Yay!

I also logged onto our prod server to see if doing the same thing there would fix that issue, and it fixed Prompt there as well. I am so excited to be able to not type out every detail of every SQL query again!

I love quick fixes like this.

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