This is a development tool that is tied to your database.  If you are looking for a tool that will allow you to work disconnected from your database, this is not the tool.   This is actually the mode I do a moderate percentage (~20%) of my development in.   For just about anyone else, the lack of disconnected support will not be a hindrance.  To the credit of Sylvain Faust International, this was a point we discussed at length during the course of this evaluation and it is a possibility in a future edition.

While the support I received during this review might not be normal, some of the support came directly from Sylvain Faust the President of the company, I got the impression that they work very closely with all of their customers and greatly encourage the free flow of ideas.  They did note that there are a few features in SQL-Programmer that were there solely at the request of a single customer.

This tool like all of the standalone development tools sports color coded syntax within the viewing and editing windows.  Until you have taken advantage of this, there is no way to appreciate how much time this can save.  The first time I worked with color coded syntax was in RapidSQL (a competitor product from Embarcadero Technologies) and it saved so much time I was able to justify the entire purchase price of the software simply for this simple feature.  One nice feature I finally located while writing this review is the ability to configure the color coding for different objects.  I can always ask for more.  Since it is bound so tightly to your database, it would have been nice to see the color coded syntax extended to database objects as well.  But, that's probably overkill and would consume resources needlessly.

SQL-Programmer consists of four main modules: Access Manager, SQL-Explorer, Documentor, and Scriptor.  Each module has a particular focus and understanding this can greatly enhance your development efforts.

The Access Manager is the no nonsense interface to get to the objects you need to work with when you know exactly what you are looking for.  This is also the place to go if you want to open or edit multiple objects at once.

Within the Access Manager you can enable or disable source code control, edit objects, execute stored procedures, get query plans and statistics, view arguments for procedures, get dependencies and references for any object, bind rules and default, create and manage indexes, generate scripts, and print a list of selected objects.  The script generation feature is very nice in that it runs in the background allowing you to continue on with your work.  (This is the Scriptor module.)  The Documentor module can also be launched from here simply by selecting print for any object(s) selected.  This is the interface where you would go to extract and work with multiple objects.  The number of objects is not a barrier.   I succeeded in extracting as many as 200 triggers to support one of my recent development efforts. 

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