Feature request: show your support for XML functions.

mscheuner

Folks, this is extremely disappointing - since V3 Beta, I've been trying to explain that SQL Prompt MUST NOT capitalize the XML XQuery function names as provided by SQL Server - and it still does.... Even though I mentioned this AGAIN during the SQL Prompt 5 EAP program, it's STILL broken in the shipping product......

Is this just not being considered a big problem, or what?? It's a MAJOR annoyance for me since I do a lot of XQuery stuff in SQL Server, and keep have to fix what SQL Prompt screws up constantly..... I'm seriously considering giving up on SQL Prompt because of this and going back to SSMS intellisense....

Let me explain in more detail yet another time:

Imagine a table with an XML column called "XmlData" - when I start typing:

SELECT XmlData.value(caret is here)
FROM dbo.MyTable

then I'm CLEARLY trying to use one of the five XML data type methods (.exist(), .modify(), .nodes(), .query(), .value()) - see here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms190798.aspx

Those XML data type methods are CASE-SENSITIVE - so SQL Prompt must NEVER EVER uppercase those! Please!!

Unfortunately, if I press the space in my query being written in the above sample, I'm left with:

SELECT XmlData.VALUE
FROM dbo.MyTable

and now my XML function is no longer valid - I have to go back and manually turn it to lowercase again.

Is it really not possible to

- detect that the column I'm operating on is of type "XML"
- the string I just typed is one of the five mentioned above (that is a complete list)
- and in this case - just do NOT kick in the UPPERCASING (which I like otherwise - great feature - JUST NOT HERE!)[/code]

Luke Jefferson

You're right, it's a frustrating flaw, and I completely agree with your complaint. I've run into this myself a few times when writing queries.

If it were a straightforward fix, believe me, we would have tackled it already, but sadly it's part of the parser and whilst the team were keen to work on improving certain aspects of it, there was no scope to look at modifying that part of the code base in this release; the last rewrite of the parser took twelve months.

We do try our best to accommodate as many user requests as possible, but we can't solve all the problems due to resource limitations. I understand this is really frustrating for you and it's a valid complaint; it isn't that we think it's fine as it is or that it is not worth fixing, it's just that we have had higher priority issues to tackle. All that said, I will do my best to push for this fix in the future and would ask readers of this post to chip in to add weight to the case.

Luke Jefferson
Product Manager
Red Gate Software

PaulGoldstraw

Hi,

As requested, this has been an issue for me too, with the frustrating side-effect that because I am new to XML, I wasn't immediately sure what the problem was when this was happening to me. I for one would like this change to be given a high priority because it is capable of causing code to break altogether

Thanks

Paul

Matthew.Wilkerson

Yes, it would be nice if it were fixed.

MikeyC

I agree that this needs to be fixed, even if it is a simple option that you check that removes these keywords from being capitalized anywhere. (I would rather have them not change case where they can be upper case than have it change it and break the code.)

meyerovb

Agreed, lack of auto completion after a sql function is really annoying