Ok, so this is old news I know, but I’ve had a busy couple of months and am only getting around to writing this now. SSMS is now a separate release from SQL itself. The latest release is here.

Monthly releases and no longer having to download GBs to get a client?

Cool!

Has anyone else noticed this?

Microsoft! Give us a dark theme, come on! I’ve always been enviously of those Devs with their dark themed Visual Studio.

I am a little annoyed about one thing however (please try to hide your shock). Management Studio since April uses a different add-in model which means all the old plugins that I had no longer worked.

Thankfully it seems that vendors have been working hard and there are a number of plugins out there now that support the newest version of management studio. A couple of my favourites are:-

SQL Sentry’s Plan Explorer (who doesn’t use this)

ApexSQL Refactor (the best of the free formatters that I could find)

Another couple of cool developments in the community are:-

The SQL Server Management Studio Enhancements Trello Board

This allows people who use SSMS to suggest ideas (bug fixes?) to Microsoft and if a “card” gets enough votes, it’ll become a Connect item. Nice to see but let’s watch that space and see what happens (says the cynic in me).

The SQL Community on Slack

I have mixed feelings towards Slack if I’m honest. On one hand it is a really good collaboration tool for teams and one the other, it’s another way for me to be interrupted at work. I now have email, Skype, Skype for frickin’ business and now Slack…grrr

Anyway, at the very least it’s going to allow me to keep in touch with other members of the SQL community out there.

Thanks for reading!