We have Down Tools Week multiple times per year at Red Gate. This allows various employees to spend a week on a project, working to build something new and interesting that we rarely have time to spend our limited resources on. Past projects have resulted in SQL Search, a mobile view of Simple Talk, and a number of internal tools that have proven very beneficial.

Last year one of our developers embarked on a project for SQLServerCentral to provide a plug-in for Management Studio to allow access to the scripts on our site. This wasn’t quite complete enough to release, but when Down Tools week occurred recently, a few developers collaborated to complete this project.

We’re releasing this Management Studio plug-in today, SQL Scripts Manager, along with our framework to build your own plugins.  You can download the tool from this link, and a link will also be placed at the top of our Scripts section at SQLServerCentral. Once you have this plugin installed, you can search for and download scripts inside SSMS, and access your briefcase without ever switching applications.

I think this is really amazing, and I’m hoping that many of you find it useful. It’s a great way to easily access your collection of scripts from anywhere, getting the latest versions of the code from SQLServerCentral that you find really useful.

If you have comments, suggestions, bugs, etc., please feel free to post them in this thread.

We’ve worked hard at Red Gate to not only build useful tools that help you build software, but also teach you how to better create your own applications. We’ll have more information and more details on the framework coming soon as well, and we look forward to seeing what types of enhancements you’ll create for SSMS. If you create something really useful, send us a note and we’ll feature your tool on the site.

Filed under: Blog Tagged: Red Gate, SQLServerCentral, syndicated