If you avoid illegal characters and reserved words in your identifiers, you'll rarely need delimiters. Sadly, SSMS applies square bracket delimiters indiscriminately, as a precaution, when generating build scripts. Phil Factor provides a handy function that adds quoted delimiters only where they are really needed and then sits back and lets SQL Prompt strip out any extraneous square brackets, in a flash.
2020-01-22
Phil Factor explores the role of table aliases, explaining when they are required, and their general purpose otherwise, the need for sensible naming of aliases, and how SQL Prompt handles them.
2020-01-20
Phil Factor shares a handy keyboard shortcut diagram that reveals some of the most useful of Prompt's keyboard shortcuts, and a wallchart showing every piece of Prompt functionality, what it does, where to find it in the various menus, and of course its keyboard shortcut.
2019-12-23
Phil Factor explores and discusses the current state of the art in SQL Formatting, as done automatically by SQL Prompt.
2019-12-16
Tony Davis reviews the major new features of SQL Prompt 10, included improved 'ranking' of its code auto-completion suggestions, tab history improvements to make it easier to find 'lost' code, and auto-fixing of code that breaks code analysis rules.
2019-11-19
In the latest version of SQL Prompt, we’ve made improvements to all the most popular features. Our new ranked suggestions algorithm prioritizes the suggestions most relevant to you, tab history improvements let you find old tabs easily and star favorites, and new auto-fixes help you resolve code issues quickly. With support for key features of SQL Server 2019, which was made available this week at Microsoft Ignite, SQL Prompt 10 gives you the latest tools to develop faster, improve code quality, and boost team productivity.
2019-11-15
There is an old joke that upgrading to the latest SQL Server is wasted on some DBAs, because they will still stick mainly to what worked in SQL Server 2005. This type of DBA is becoming rare, in my experience, but there is still some truth in the idea that many of us don’t get the ‘full power’ from our SQL Server tools. We work with them as they come, ‘out of the box’, and use only a fraction of their features. The time to explore ‘new stuff’, at least as much as we’d like to, remains elusive.
2019-10-31
Phil Factor demonstrates the correct use of the RETURN keyword in stored procedures or batches, to pass back a non-zero RETURN code to the calling process, informing it of the error. He also explains some of its misuses.
2019-09-12
Phil Factor illustrates the 'quirks' of the SQL_VARIANT datatype and why it's best to investigate when SQL Prompt alerts you to its use. It is only safe to store data as a SQL_VARIANT, if you explicitly convert it to its true type before you use it.
2019-08-08
The SQL Prompt Best Practice rule checks whether a comparison or expression includes a NULL literal ('NULL'), which in SQL Server, rather than result in an error, will simply always produce a NULL result. Phil Factor explains how to avoid this, and other SQL NULL-related calamities.
2019-07-30
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