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RapidSQL 5.2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Clicking the toolbar button for a table/index/stored proc/trigger/view will display a window similar to the figure below.  In this case it is the table explorer.  You will notice that I already get a lot of relevant information.  It will give me the owner, name, and number of rows in each table.  I can filter the list by object owner if I need to.  Your developers no longer need to run a count(*) against the tables to see how much data there is or inadvertently run a query against a multi-million row table.   How many times have you been asked by a developer to kill a run away query because they "didn't know there was that much data in the table"?

rapidsql52-02.gif (8913 bytes)

You don't have to use the specific object explorers if you don't choose to, although I highly recommend it.  You can access the scripts directly through the Explorer as shown in the figure below.  Here I have extracted the DDL from 4 tables into my workspace.  As you can see, you get nicely formatted output along with color coded syntax which is extremely handy.

The color coded syntax might be something that people take for granted.  I do a lot of TSQL development work and a lot of performance work.  The top two tools that I use are screen resolution and color coded syntax.  I run my screen resolution at 1280x1024.  (No I don't wear glasses.)  I know that comments are in green, keywords are in blue, constants in red, and everything else is in black.  This gives me the ability to display large blocks of TSQL in a single window and scan that window for the sections that I need.  If you have ever looked at large volumes of well formatted SQL, you know that in many cases you don't have to even be able to read what is there simply because certain blocks of syntax have a characteristic look.  The colors that are used are customizable although I would like to see a much expanded list of discrete objects that can be color coded.  SQL-Programmer and Query Analyzer do a much better job of this at the moment.  One productivity boost that you now get in RapidSQL for doing this kind of work is full screen mode.  Locate the button on the second toolbar (11th from the left) that looks like a window.  This will strip away all of the toolbars, title bars, and all other elements to give you the entire screen to work in.

rapidsql52-03.gif (49441 bytes)

RapidSQL 5.2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Michael R. Hotek

All content on this site, except where noted, represents an original work of Michael R. Hotek and is protected by applicable copyright laws. The SQL Server FAQ is the sole work of Neil Pike. No page, portion of a page, or download may be used for commercial purposes in whole or in part without the express, written permission of the applicable author.