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RE: SQL Prompt IntelliSense for SQL Server

Bart Read — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 04:22:00 GMT

Hi James,I completely understand what you're saying, and therefore if you want confirmation in writing that SQL Prompt 2 is free, and that the license agreement bundled with the installer is invalid with respect to the 14-day trial period (and any associated licensing fees for continued use), please drop me a line at bartDOTreadATredHYPHENgateDOTcom. We'll then send you a letter to this effect signed by one of Red Gate's directors. This offer also stands for anyone else who is concerned about potential licensing issues with SQL Prompt 2.Hope that helps.Many thanks,

RE: SQL Prompt IntelliSense for SQL Server

jamesw1 — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 16:17:00 GMT

Still, the licence statements in the software install prevent us from installing it full stop.

I would also think that this statement is true for every commercial organisation and will continue to be true until the licence is modified.

RE: SQL Prompt IntelliSense for SQL Server

Bart Read — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 10:36:00 GMT

It's a fair point Jereme, but what about everything in writing that *we've* also published saying it's free? It says so on our website, it says so on all our adverts, it says so in all the product reviews, and I've just said so above. How would it look if we went back on that? SQL Prompt 2 is free, and Red Gate will never ask you for money for it. Ever. As I said, the license agreement is a mistake, it's our mistake and we hold our hands up to it, but for the amount of hassle it would take to fix it's just not worth it.I'll admit, SQL Prompt 2 is not free as the Free Software Foundation (www.fsf.org) would define it: Red Gate will *never* release the source code. But it's free for you to *use* in perpetuity. Let me say it again: Red Gate will *never* ask you for money for SQL Prompt 2. I don't think I can make it any clearer than that.Thanks,

RE: SQL Prompt IntelliSense for SQL Server

Jereme Guenther — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 10:22:00 GMT

Bart that is great to know, but that is still asking a lot of people to put a lot of faith in your company. I have never heard anything bad about your company, but still, if they decided to get mean in the future then everything in writing directly associated with the product and its install, would be against the user.

RE: SQL Prompt IntelliSense for SQL Server

Bart Read — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 03:35:00 GMT

Hi James,The issue with the licensing agreement in SQL Prompt 2 is our mistake, which we have been aware of for some time. It should not mention a 14 day trial period. There is in fact no trial period for SQL Prompt 2, and there are no restrictions on how long you can continue to use SQL Prompt 2. You can continue to use it after September 1st for as long as you like, even after version 3 is released. As I say, and as the article also points out: no restrictions, and it is free.Hopefully that clears that up once and for all. Thanks,

RE: SQL Prompt IntelliSense for SQL Server

jamesw1 — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 21:21:00 GMT

I just went to try this product.

Because it's being installed on a company pc and knowing what the implications of installing product that claims to be free I actually read the licence documentation.

DON'T INSTALL THIS IF YOU ARE CONSTRAINED BY LICENCING ISSUES. The licence grants a 14 DAY licence after which fees must be paid.

This is NOT what the article says and in my humble opinion is false and misleading and could result in severe penalties.

Not only could the company I work for have been subjected to fines and penalties, I could have been sacked for installing it.

RE: SQL Prompt IntelliSense for SQL Server

Bart Read — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 11:56:00 GMT

Further to my earlier comments, I seem to have stirred up a frenzy of decision-making in the office today, and as a result I am now able give you full pricing and upgrade details for SQL Prompt 3.You can find the announcement at:http://www.red-gate.com/MessageBoard/viewtopic.php?t=2815However, the short version is that SQL Prompt 3 will cost $195, with an introductory $99 offer for pre-orders placed on or before September 28th. In addition the discounts for those who purchased the original PromptSQL are as described in my previous post.Hope that helps.Many thanks,

RE: SQL Prompt IntelliSense for SQL Server

Steven Hanzek — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 08:13:00 GMT

I've been experimenting with SQL prompt since yesterday and find that, for me, it is very helpful. While I am a very fast typist, my SQL skills and memory for field names are not quite as fast. So I don't have an issue with typing slowly and making full use of the product.

Also, I'm running a desktop pc at work that has a gigabyte of ram, so I don't notice the memory impact as much.

I'll recommend it to a few of our other (less-experienced) developers; I showed it to our Integration Analyst (Database administrator) and he liked it, but didn't feel he had a need for it. Of course, he's a young pup with a working memory.

Steve

RE: SQL Prompt IntelliSense for SQL Server

Bart Read — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 08:02:00 GMT

A quick update on the licensing issue. I just spoke to our marketing director Simon Galbraith about what we'll do for people who purchased PromptSQL just before Red Gate acquired it and released SQL Prompt. The official line is that for anyone who purchased a PromptSQL license from Atadore, we will discount the amount paid for that license from the price paid for a SQL Prompt 3 license, whatever that might turn out to be.Hope that helps.Thanks,

RE: SQL Prompt IntelliSense for SQL Server

Bart Read — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 06:05:00 GMT

Interesting thread here, and I think all the comments that have been made are fair. We're very aware of the issues with SQL Prompt 2, and that's a big part of the reason it's free. We decided that we wouldn't be happy to charge for it in its present state.However we're also very aware that SQL intellisense functionality is something that a lot of people are after, and that whilst there are various offerings out there, including SQL Prompt 2, none of them provides a really definitive or satisfactory solution. This is mainly because it's a really hard problem to solve. And if you don't believe me just listen to some of the Microsoft guys talking about it here:http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showID=184This webcast is actually about the new Visual Studio Team System for Database Professionals, but there's a discussion about intellisense roughly 25 minutes into the show. It makes for pretty interesting listening.Obviously we're working on a new version of SQL Prompt right now, and being slightly cagey about the whole thing to boot. We're aiming to address all the issues people have with SQL Prompt 2, and generally to provide a much more comprehensive intellisense solution. We're also looking at how we can better support very large databases since in this context intellisense would probably be at its most useful. Anybody can find their way around a database with a few dozen tables, although intellisense would obviously help, but what if you have several thousand tables? Something like intellisense becomes almost essential.I can't be too specific about dates at this point, however we are aiming to get a beta of version 3 out sometime in the first couple of weeks in August. You can find more details about the beta program at http://www.red-gate.com/messageboard/viewtopic.php?t=2567.If all goes well the final release should be available at the end of September or very early in October. The beta is relatively soon in order to give us more time to respond to user feedback and incorporate any necessary changes into the final version. On the memory front I think I probably need to say something about this now in order to avoid disappointment later, as it were. To do intellisense properly in any language is a tricky thing, and to do it well, and keep it responsive (remember, it has to keep up with your typing speed) requires the use of some slightly hairy data structures. Dynamic arrays and linked lists just aren't going to cut it here. Let's say your candidate list has popped up and it's got 20000 objects in it, and now you press a key and that list has to *instantly* be filtered down to contain only candidates starting with whatever character you just typed. So you have to have a fast data structure, and you have to keep a lot of the information in physical memory to keep the intellisense responsive. Obviously you throw as much as possible onto disk to keep the footprint down, but there's no getting away from the fact that you need a lot of memory to make it work properly.Now you might be feeling slightly sceptical at this point, which is fair enough, but consider this. I currently have instances of Visual Studio 2005, Query Analyzer, and SQL Server Management Studio open. In VS 2005 I'm working on a C# project with roughly 11000 lines of code, plus about another 5000 lines of comments spread across 50 or 60 files. I'm also referencing maybe half a dozen other DLLs. At the moment I have only one file open, defining a single type, which is less than 300 lines. VS 2005 is currently using 137MB of memory, and so far I haven't done anything except open the project. Query Analyzer has a couple of query windows open with active connections to my local SQL Server 2000 instance. One of these windows contains a script with about 1100 lines of SQL in it. Currently QA is using just over 8MB of RAM. SSMS has one active connection and a single open SQL script, which again weighs in at around 1000 lines. SSMS is currently using 62MB of RAM.So why the big differences? Well QA is basically, and I mean no disrespect in saying this, not much more than a glorified text editor. It's got a bit of SQL Server-centric functionality bolted on to it, but like I say, it's a relatively simple application, and therefore it's small and fast. SSMS on the other hand is basically a locked down, and somewhat cut-down, version of Visual Studio 2005, and Visual Studio 2005 is a fully-functional IDE, and that's a lot of overhead to be carrying. Hence: 62MB. So why the extra 70MB for VS2005, bearing in mind that the project I'm working on is a back-end DLL with no UI components or anything like that (no need for the forms designer)? You can bet a big chunk of that extra memory is used by intellisense. Now admittedly I'm using ReSharper rather than the intellisense built in to VS2005, but the situation isn't so very different if I switch back to VS2005 intellisense.And so with SQL Prompt we're basically bolting a big chunk of the functionality provided by a modern IDE onto Query Analyzer or SSMS or whatever, and when you think of it in those terms it's not so surprising that it chews up quite a bit of memory. You think it should be small because it's sort of like a plug-in. It's not the main event at all, it's just there to help, but that discounts the complexity of what it's doing. Seriously, try any modern IDE on a project of any size and watch it chew through your memory: VS 2005, Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA, NetBeans, *anything* from Borland. Unfortunately it's the nature of the beast. Clearly though we are doing everything we can to keep the memory footprint as small as possible.Also, all of that said, we believe there is a bug in SQL Prompt 2 that means sometimes it uses up hundreds of megabytes for no apparent reason for even moderately sized databases. It's pretty rare though, and is usually cured just by restarting SQL Prompt.Anyway, I hope that goes some way to answering some of the questions and concerns raised on this thread, and if you've got anything else I'm more than happy for you to come back at me.Finally, and before I forget, somebody (grasshopper?) asked me about licensing. Unfortunately I can't really answer that at this stage: typically that kind of thing gets decided quite late in the project lifecycle after months of wrangling. What I'd suggest is that nearer the release date you get in touch with our sales team at sales@red-gate.com and they'll be able to give you a definitive answer. Sorry I can't be more help than that for now.Kind regards,

RE: SQL Prompt IntelliSense for SQL Server

Mike O'Neill — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 01:04:00 GMT

An intersting mix of commentary unfortunately mostly negative .

I bought a license for the older incarnation as PromptSQL and loved it . It too had the quoted memory implications .

Having loaded and used the new SQLPrompt version much of the slowness has been overcome , I work with it a 512Mb Laptop and a 768Mb desktop and do notice the difference but only just. Add more memory and i suspect it would go away totally.

For those who have condemned SQLPropmt , it maybe they didn't spend sufficient time setting up the options.

In my experience any slowness of response is on the initial load of the db schema as you initially change to a new Db. In my work I have to support upwards of 10 db daily and I see this regularly. Once the schema is there its seamless.

You gather I am a Vast Fan , maybe I just type slowly or I am a lousy typist but as with intellisence in vs2005 I would be without it for productivity reasons. Add SQLprompt to the query designer in VS2005 and what more do you want ??

RE: SQL Prompt IntelliSense for SQL Server

Jereme Guenther — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 13:33:00 GMT

That would have been great, bummer they took it out. I know they removed it because of a time crunch but do you know if they are planning on adding it back in with a service pack?

RE: SQL Prompt IntelliSense for SQL Server

John Scarborough — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 13:07:00 GMT

A few points:

An early beta of Yukon (first beta iirc) did indeed have intellisense. It was awesome.

SQL Prompt was resource intensive so even though it was very cool, I quit using it. No problem, I can live without it, but I liked the idea.

And as to the complaint of some people that intellisense is intrusive, unnecessary, whatever: turn it off if you don't like it. I don't know of any development app where you can't turn it off if you want to, but for me, it's useful to be able to browse through all the methods, function, properties, etc, and darned handy to save typing.

RE: SQL Prompt IntelliSense for SQL Server

Jereme Guenther — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 12:24:00 GMT

I do alot of development in addition to writting SQL code and have really gotten hooked on intellisence. I know that in a perfect world, rules would be followed so all the naming conventions were the same. As it stands we have multiple naming conventions in place, which makes it very difficult to remember exactly what convention was used for a given database or table. Also in SQL2000 (probubly 2005 as well), when writing SQL code you had to ensure that you were writing case sensitive code if you wanted SQL server to be able to reuse its execution plans correctly. Having intellisense helps me get things done right.

However, I have worked in SQL for so long without intelisense that I wouldn't be all that handycapped not to have it.

I haven't taken the time to customize my menus yet so I won't comment on that one. The one annoying bug I have found so far is in SQL2005's management studio. It occurs when I open a table, select a column name from the criteria pane, and press tab to move off of the selection. Management studio freezes for several seconds before a I get a .NET runtime error which asks me if I want to terminate the program or continue with it. So far I have just told it to ignore the error and continue which has worked fine, however I have tried to cut down on my use of the tab key in this area. I did try going into SQL Prompts options and disabled the tab key. This fix didn't work at the time, however I have recently rebooted my computer and can't recreate the problem so maybe it is fixed now.

RE: SQL Prompt IntelliSense for SQL Server

Aaron Dutton — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 11:54:00 GMT

I have to agree with the majority of posters here. I installed it but haven't really found it to be beneficial.It hasn't been a real resource hog that I've noticed, but it just doesn't work that well. I just expect different things than it is listing while I type. Overall I find that it doesn't save any time or keystrokes because it is never suggesting what I'm looking for.

RE: SQL Prompt IntelliSense for SQL Server

Calvin Lawson — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 11:35:00 GMT

I tried this product a month ago. The CPU utilization goes up to 99% when it's sucking all the relational data in, but it drops back down after that. Which is pretty much fine, although kind of brutish.But I uninstalled it anyway. Maybe I'm just a fast coder, but it's way to slow! If they speed it up it could be pretty cool.

RE: SQL Prompt IntelliSense for SQL Server

Aaron Ingold — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 10:18:00 GMT

I tried this roughly 2-3 weeks ago and found a lot of the same issues. Using it was extremely slow and it consumed a great deal of system resources. While it might help with database schema, one thing I like about intellisense generators is that they save me time in typing out long lists of columns, etc... This one definitely didn't. While I've been a huge fan of Red Gate's products in the past, I think this one needs to mature a little bit before I'll get all that excited about it.Not to hawk another product here, but I was using ApexSQL Edit for a while which has similar functionality and seemed to be better performing. However that product had its own problems with memory leaks and stability in other areas. I'm wondering if they've fixed those yet.

RE: SQL Prompt IntelliSense for SQL Server

DavidSimpson — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 09:53:00 GMT

Once of heard of this tool and the fact that in worked with Query analyzer and Ultra Edit made me want to try it out. But like many of the other responses, I found the tool to be rather buggy.

First the fact that the prompts work some of the time but not all of the time is rather annoying.

Also, when I prefix a table then begin typing in the "where" clause, SQL Prompt will bring up a list of all the columns rather then waiting until I enter the prefix. Once you press the dot it inserts the column that started with the same letter as the prefix (unless you type fast then it simply inserts the first column in the list). For example instead of "select * from TableA a where a.<list of columns>" I get "select * from TableA a where aColumn".

I've seen the performance hit mentioned before but after a few seconds it seemed to get better. Hopefully this will be improved in the next release.

So in the end not much time is safed by using this version because I must constantly undo and retype or check that not only if the prompt comes up but if it displaying the correct information. Maybe I didn't have it configured right but then again I really didn't want to spend a lot of time tweeking the tool just to get it to work correctly for a basic query.

I think the idea is great and will definitly revisit this when 3.0 is released, but even free is too much for me for the current version.

RE: SQL Prompt IntelliSense for SQL Server

rob orchiston — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 09:47:00 GMT

Tried it. Hated it. Uninstalled it. The look and feel is yuk. It looks like something that was written for windows 3.1. Maybe I didn't set it up right but it kept bugging me to log in, just when I was starting to write a bunch of SQL. It was more of a pain than a help. I would be interested in such a tool and would find features such as parameter order for functions like DatePart a benefit. It still needs some work in my view. I may take a look at subsequent releases.

RE: SQL Prompt IntelliSense for SQL Server

Pedro R. Lopez — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 09:23:00 GMT

On my case the program takes a lot of memory m and ussing version 2.0.0 , some times takes 128 MB of memory.

RE: SQL Prompt IntelliSense for SQL Server

cutiger93 — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 09:09:00 GMT

Bart,

Could you comment on license from the legacy version? I like this product and it has helped me an our developers do our job more efficiently. I am sure that some of the bugs will be worked out by you guys.

RE: SQL Prompt IntelliSense for SQL Server

Sean Fackrell — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 08:57:00 GMT

I have been using SQLPrompt for a while and still like it. It doesn't always work but I've learnt to work around it. The slowness is usually just when you open up a new connection. INSERT statements seem to produce a list of tables rather than columns of the table you are writing the statement for. I also get times when it just stops giving me options completely.

I wouldn't write it off completely though. It's a great idea and some features are really useful. If Red Gate can iron out the bugs it'll be worth paying for IMHO.

RE: SQL Prompt IntelliSense for SQL Server

Steven Hanzek — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 08:53:00 GMT

I just downloaded the newest version (2.0.0.0) and was happy until I read the comment from bnordberg about typing with their head down.

If I type in:

"select * from " and let the application list the tables to choose from, and select a table (Agency), it displays:

"select * from Agency", which is fine. And if I then add "where ", it pops up a list of field names, which is also fine.

However, if I am typing away and type in:

"select * from agency where ", the intellisense program lists all of the functions, none of the fields for the table "Agency". It is as if it is case sensitive. If i go back and replace the "a" with "A", it shows the table fields.

Guess I'll have to experiment with it. I love the concept, because I'm sort of a newbie to a lot of the sql syntax, and some of the tables I work with were not quite consistent with their field naming conventions (agencyid, agencycode, agencynumber may all refer to same data in different tables...).

Thanks

Steve

RE: SQL Prompt IntelliSense for SQL Server

bnordberg — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 08:46:00 GMT

I'm having similiar slowness problems. When it is searching the database for a list of fields or tables to show, my cpu is tagged and it acutally slows me down instead of speeding me up. I typically have to wait 2-5 seconds before my cursor will move again. In that time I could have just typed it out. Also I find if I am not looking at the screen and just typing away, prompt may have put up its pop-up, slowed my system down and I chose something from the list instead of doing what I was typing.

Neat idea, but it appears to slow me down more than help.

Thanks Red Gate - hopefully the next version will get the lead out.

RE: SQL Prompt IntelliSense for SQL Server

Andy Warren — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 08:36:00 GMT

Thanks for the follow up Bart - nice to see vendors monitoring discussions about their products.

RE: SQL Prompt IntelliSense for SQL Server

Bart Read — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 08:32:00 GMT

Hi Christopher,It sounds to me like you've got the initial beta version of SQL Prompt 2.0 that went out some time ago. The release version is completely free and therefore contains no evaluation popup. My best suggestion is that you download and reinstall the version from:http://www.red-gate.com/products/SQL_Prompt/index.htmHope that helps.Kind regards,

RE: SQL Prompt IntelliSense for SQL Server

cutiger93 — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 08:01:00 GMT

My company bought a license from the guy that did this before Red-Gate bought it. I was please with the last version 1.4 before it was sold. It did take some resources. I switched back from 2.0 to 1.4. Hopefully our licenses will be retroactive.

RE: SQL Prompt IntelliSense for SQL Server

Christopher Bellizzi — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 05:50:00 GMT

I ahd the same problem with it impacting my system. Plus it said it was a free download but after the eval it shut it's self off and was annoying that everytime I logged in it popped up saying "your evaluation of SQL Prompt has expired" ended up uninstalling. I like the feature as I like the fact I don't need to type (I'm a lazy dba).I would try it again and gladly pay for the program if the bugs were fixed.

RE: SQL Prompt IntelliSense for SQL Server

Henk Kok — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 03:39:00 GMT

I appreciate the effort the author has made to install and test the utility and write an article to inform his fellow Sql Server professionals.But showing that the utility presents a list of column names after a tablename is used after the FROM keyword and next presenting the statementselect * from sysconstraints.idWhere <list of suggestions>followed by the remark "I’m sure by now you can see the benefits of this tool if you are unfamiliar with the database schema." is of such poor quality that I had no choice but to rate this article as poor.Heck, I was so confused by the authors enthusiasm that I started to doubt my Sql knowledge and tried to execute "select * from sysconstraints.id", thinking it might be a new shorthand notation for "select * from (select id from sysconstraints) c".By the way: frankly, I'm dissapointed that the intellisense list inselect * from sysconstraints.idWhere <list of suggestions>Starts with (or maybe even exclusively contains?!) functions instead of column names from the table after the FROM (or tablenames/aliases if more than one table/alias present). Also I would have expected the _Intelli_Sense utility NOT to suggest column names after a tablename directly following a FROM keyword.In the end this article and David le Quesne's comment have been usefull: I'll wait for the al new version 2.0 of this utility before I'll give it a try.Edit:I noticed that a word of criticism is also in place for myself: I rushed into rating the article as poor and writing this comment after the "select from column" statement, which prevented me from noticing the "what to show in suggestion list" customization option. This could very well invalidate my remark regarding the function names in the list, but I am for sure not the person who is going to test this.Edit2: Just noticed that this is the 2.0 version, so, I'll have to wait for the 3.0 version...

RE: SQL Prompt IntelliSense for SQL Server

David le Quesne — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 01:02:00 GMT

Test test test is right Wayne.

I installed the freely distributed version 1.0 of SQLPrompt on my machine, and it ran away with all the system resources, taking 99% of the CPU utilization. I had to deinstall it again, much as I liked the functionality, I couldn't accept the impact it was having on the performance of my machine...

David

SQL Prompt IntelliSense for SQL Server

Wayne-153714 — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 13:49:00 GMT

Comments posted to this topic are about the content posted at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/WFillis/sqlpromptintellisenseforsqlserver.asp