SQL Server Management Studio – tips for improving the TSQL coding process
Take a look at Red Gate's SQL Prompt - it's a great product (as are most of Red Gate's contributions)
SQL Inform is also a great free (online) tool for formatting long procedures that can sometimes get out of hand.
Apart from that, I've learned from painful experience it's a good thing to precede any DELETE statement with a BEGIN TRANSACTION. Once you're sure your statement is deleting only what it should, you can then COMMIT.
Saved me on a number of occasions ;-)
community owned wiki Answer - feel free to edit or add comments:
Keyboard Shortcuts
- F5, CTRL + E or ALT + X - execute currently selected TSQL code
- CTRL + R – show/hide Results Pane
- CTRL + N – Open New Query Window
- CTRL + L – Display query execution plan
Editing Shortcuts
- CTRL + K + C and CTRL + K + U - comment/uncomment selected block of code (suggested by Unsliced)
- CTRL + SHIFT + U and CTRL + SHIFT + L - changes selected text to UPPER/lower case
- SHIFT + ALT + Selecting text - select/cut/copy/paste a rectangular block of text
Addons
- Red Gate's SQL Prompt - IntelliSense (suggested by Galwegian)
- SQLinForm - formatting of TSQL (suggested by Galwegian)
- Poor Man's T-SQL Formatter - open-source formatting add-in
Other Tips
- Using comma prefix style (suggested by Cade Roux)
- Using keyboard accelerators (suggested by kcrumley)
Useful Links
+1 for SQL Prompt.
Something real simple that I guess I had never seen - which will work with just about ANY SQL environment (and other languages even):
After 12 years of SQL coding, I've recently become a convert to the comma-prefix style after seeing it in some SSMS generated code, I have found it very efficient. I was very surprised that I had never seen this style before, especially since it has boosted my productivity immensely.
SELECTt.a,t.b,t.c,t.dFROM tIt makes it really easy to edit select lists, parameter lists, order by lists, group by lists, etc. I'm finding that I'm spending a lot less time fooling with adding and removing commas from the end of lists after cut-and-paste operations - I guess it works out easier because you almost always add things at the end, and with postfix commas, that requires you to move the cursor more.
Try it, you'll be surprised - I know I was.