With so many exciting new features in Visual Studio 2008 to play with, I haven’t had much time to look at the preview releases of SQL Server 2008, alias Katmai. The last I heard was there wouldn’t be much new stuff for developers, just features for DBAs and BI analysts with a few performance optimisations thrown in.
The previous upgrade, SQL Server 2000 to 2005, was a huge step forward for developers and added significant advances like CLR integration, SQL Server Management Objects (SMO), Integration Services (SSIS) and a native XML data type; as well as T-SQL enhancements like Common Table Expressions (CTEs), structured error handling with try/catch, pivot, apply, top(n) and row_number.
So I was surprised to see how much new stuff is packed into the latest SQL Server 2008 CTP release, even, finally, IntelliSense for Management Studio, which was much anticipated but conspicuously absent from 2005:
Also notice the new collapsible code regions, just like you get in Visual Studio. Editing T-SQL has never been such fun! Although, you have to feel a bit sorry for RedGate, whose SQL Prompt plug-in has been filling the auto-completion gap for the last few years.
The groovy new features don’t end with IntelliSense, there are plenty more being sneaked into SQL 2008. I’ll be looking at more soon.
December 4, 2007 at 7:36 pm
Ah nice to see, nice to have a little bit of an upgrade in the User Interface sense. The one thing I always thought about SQL2005 Management studio is there wasn’t much new functionality over previous SQL2000 manager, but it was always a LOT slower.
December 5, 2007 at 4:14 am
[...] SQL Server Management Studio 2008 includes IntelliSense – About time [...]
December 5, 2007 at 9:58 am
Nice… that is a really useful thing
December 7, 2007 at 12:36 am
Nice! Hopefully it will be more solid than RedGate SQL Prompt. I kept getting unhandled exceptions after installing these tools.
Collapsible regions will be HUGE, especially for T-SQL programmers.
Maybe the guys at JetBrains will jump on this.
December 9, 2007 at 7:50 am
[...] SQL Server 2008 will have IntelliSense, by Ciz. I have not worked with SQL Server in a while but when I get back to it, this should help make it more fun. [...]
December 11, 2007 at 5:23 am
[...] SQL Server 2008 Management Studio wird IntelliSense haben – ein Segen für DB Admins [...]
January 31, 2008 at 10:25 am
not sure which CTP you’re looking at, I just pulled the 2008 CTP in January and intellisense is not enabled for sql queries only for xml editing. help file states intellisense will not be set up for sql editing (I hope this is for the ctp only)
March 11, 2008 at 3:38 am
[...] to be a pretty fast database. By the way, the upcoming version of SQL management tools (2008) has intellisense, which is very [...]
April 15, 2008 at 9:41 pm
It’s crap. Buy redgate tools instead.
April 16, 2008 at 1:13 pm
SQL Management studio needs better object browser, like Toad from Quest Software for example. It has filter, but its pain to use it. It even doesn’t have any shortcut keys.
May 20, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Very nice to hear that sql 2008 has this feature. We don’t need to depend on third-party tools like RedGate, which is very slow and lots of error.
August 20, 2008 at 5:35 am
Unfortunately intellisense only works when you’re working against an SQL 2008 database. There is no support for it against 2005, 2000, or previous DBs. Kind of useless, in my opinion.
August 20, 2008 at 7:04 am
I agree w/ Kevin. I went and installed the 2008 SQL Server Management Studio just to use Intellisense on my current SQL Server 2005 instance. No go though…only works for 2008 instances…
September 3, 2008 at 7:25 am
The intellisense in SSMS 2008 only works for 2008 database instances and only works on selects. IMO RedGate’s SQL Prompt is a much better solution.
Gary
November 5, 2009 at 6:08 am
MS has committed to churning out a new SQL Server version every 2 to 3 years. So SQL Server 2011 will surely have better intellisense. I’ve waited this long… pretty much don’t need it anymore. Thanks anyway MS.