A couple of days ago, after hours, when it was raining here in Barcelona (yes that can happen also here), I downloaded, installed and started playing around in the the evaluation edition of Sql Server 2008 (KATMAI).
One of the first things I wanted to double-check was the IntelliSense. Yes, as from Sql Server 2008 IntelliSense has finally arrived!
In the CTP versions of Sql 2008 there was some confusion about backwards compatibility of this IntelliSense. In some CTP's it also worked on Sql2005 databases and in others it didn't. I'm a bit sad to announce that in the final product, it will only work with Sql 2008 databases. So if you use SSMS 2008 on a Sql 2005 or Sql2000 database, there's no IntelliSense.
Anyway, I think it is a really cool and useful feature, especially when you have to write queries in SSMS (Sql Server Management Studio) on Dynamics NAV databases:
(Yes, if you look closely at the image above, I have a Dynamics NAV 5.1 CRONUS DB running on Sql Server 2008 and it seems to work fine, although not officially supported yet…)
You can just start typing your query, and if you want to see the IntelliSense dropdown, just type CTRL + SPACE. Then you can use the arrows or PgUp & PgDn buttons to select the table you are interested in.
This is of course only one simple example of what IntelliSense can do for you, if you want to know more, just have a look in the BOL (Books Online).
For example there's the Complete Word option. If what you have typed has more than one possible match, invoke Complete Word to display a list of possible matches, which you can then use to find the term and insert it into your code.
Another one is the Quick Info option; it displays the complete declaration for any identifier in your code. When you move the mouse pointer over an identifier, its declaration is displayed in a yellow pop-up window:
Another possibility is Delimiter Matching and Highlighting. Automatic matching of syntax pairs gives you immediate feedback on whether syntax elements that must be coded in pairs are correctly paired.
If only we had something like this in the Dynamics NAV C/AL editor…
Really nice blog. Thanks for your blogging.
http://www.learningdom.com/
Posted by: online SQL traning | 10/09/2009 at 15:29