New feature candidate: SQL Tab Magic available in BETA

Luke Jefferson

Hello!

Here at Red Gate we’ve been working on a new feature for the next major release of SQL Prompt. It’s called SQL Tab Magic, and it improves tab management in SQL Server Management Studio. We think it's awesome. We hope you do too!

Try it out and let us know what you think, either by responding directly to Theo (theo.spears@red-gate.com) or by using the Send Feedback feature in the SQL Tab Magic toolbar.

You can learn more, and download the early access preview here.

All the best,

The SQL Prompt Team

tdewitt@directtechnology.

I was running the EAP on this product. Yesterday, I had a loss of power shutdown on my laptop which of course did an untimely end to my SQL Server SSMS session. At the time I had between 5 and 10 tabs open when the loss of power occured.

Today when I restarted my computer and then started SSMS, SQL Tab Magic attempted to restore my open tabs.

The process not only reload the tabs that were open, but proceeded to attempt open every tab that had been open previously in multiple sessions. SSMS finally crash around 180 tabs. Several additional attempts to restart SSMS resulted in the same results. I finally started removing add-in's until I hit SQL Tab Magic and the problem went away.

I was then able to open SSMS properly, shut it down, re-install SQL Tab Magic and everything appears to be working properly.

nmg196

I can't see how you even use this product. After installation I can find no new menu items or toolbar buttons etc. When does it appear?

Not sure why I'm actually asking here as it seems redgate never respond to forum posts looking at the dates above.

rbennet8

I have experienced the same issue after installing tab magic. It goes into a query opening frenzy until SSMS stops working. It shows a new window saying corrupt memory, but you cannot enter any information or send the message. I used task manager to kill SSMS. I even tried to remove all ~xxx.sql files from my temp folder, but I got the same result. I unistalled tab magic and SSMS starts just fine. Let me know when you get this fixed so I can install it again. I like the concept of what this app will provide.

jwestpfahl

Yes - this is a very annoying bug and a major issue with Tab Magic.

Tab Magic creates a file called documents.db in the C:\Users\XXXX\AppData\Local\Red Gate\SQL Tab Magic folder. If you remove or rename the file, Tab Magic will successfully launch. Though you have lost the history and all the old tabs.

Note that this file can be opened by notepad and the SQL code is visible. So when I have the issue of opening SSMS, I just rename the file. That way if I really need the SQL code, I could just search the renamed file.

I wish Tab Magic had a feature to remove tabs from the history. After a period of several weeks and months, the closed tab history becomes way too cumbersome to use and search as a result.

kondrich

There is a new version of SQL Tab Magic from July, 3rd 2012 that will expire by the end of September 2012. It's unbelievable: This awesome piece of software will be in EAP for one year soon.
Is there a release planned or is it considered beta forever?

Btw, this newest version is still not compatible with SSMS 2012.

David Atkinson

It's work that we'd love to do, but the difficulty we're having is earmarking the required engineering resource to tackle the work. We're keen to ensure that the current version remains available in 'early access' so long as it hasn't beeen released as a commercial product or as part of SQL Prompt.

David Atkinson
Product Manager
Red Gate

kondrich

David,

thank you for your reply. When could we see (at least) a SSMS 2012 compatible version? That would be very helpful...

David Atkinson

Again, I'm yet not in a position to answer this as we've not costed the work. Hopefully we'll do the estimation in the next few weeks and provided this isn't a "huge" piece of work, it could be included in our general maintenance work.

David

PaulGoldstraw

Is there any progress with this? I am also now using SQL Server 2012 and while I had the same problems others had (namely in the event of a crash, Tab Magic had a bit of a habit of reloading some tabs,but curiously not all, from as much as a few months prior), I do miss the functionality. It was useful to know when I closed SSMS I would get my tabs back, and if even more so, if I accidentally closed a tab, I could retrieve it.

kondrich

Does not seem to be so. Even current September beta does not work with SSMS 2012.
Btw, congrats on your beta anniversary, SQL Tab Magic!

Matt_B

David,

Has there been any further improvement on this?

I had to upgrade to SSMS 2012 some months back to support 2012 servers, but I'm finding it quite unreliable and crashing too frequently and making me wish very much for Tab Magic.
After today's crash I'm going back to SMMS 2008 (primarily for Tab Magic) for normal use and will just use SSMS 2012 when I need to admin 2012 servers.

I'm really at the stage where I'd happily pay for the time saver Tab Magic can be.

David Atkinson

We're still not in a position to give an estimate. However, things should become clearer in the coming weeks.

Apologies for the non-committal response!

David

kondrich

David,

is there any news available? We would like to use SQL Tab Magic in SSMS 2012. In fact that's the main reason why our people still stick to SSMS 2008 R2.

mark_anderson_us

Hi Guys

Had a crash and now when I launch SMSS (with tabmagic installed) it keep opening tabs forever. Tried uninstall and reinstall, no louck. SQL2008 R2

Any suggestions
Mark

kondrich

A colleague reported the same issue as Mark to me.

PaulGoldstraw

mark_anderson_us wrote:

Hi Guys

Had a crash and now when I launch SMSS (with tabmagic installed) it keep opening tabs forever. Tried uninstall and reinstall, no louck. SQL2008 R2

Any suggestions
Mark

I had that problem when i used it on 2008 a few times and the only solution I could find was to keep right clicking tabs and selecting close all as they were loading, if I got too many open I would run out of memory and have to restart SSMS all over again.

Closing them all then closing SSMS properly seemed to get rid of all the extra tabs. The strange bit was sometimes the tabs it would load would be ones from months previous, that hadn't loaded up on previous starts and I had forgotten I'd ever had open. However closing them manually did seem to work for me

Thanks

Paul

mark_anderson_us

PaulGoldstraw wrote:

mark_anderson_us wrote:

Hi Guys

Had a crash and now when I launch SMSS (with tabmagic installed) it keep opening tabs forever. Tried uninstall and reinstall, no louck. SQL2008 R2

Any suggestions
Mark

I had that problem when i used it on 2008 a few times and the only solution I could find was to keep right clicking tabs and selecting close all as they were loading, if I got too many open I would run out of memory and have to restart SSMS all over again.

Closing them all then closing SSMS properly seemed to get rid of all the extra tabs. The strange bit was sometimes the tabs it would load would be ones from months previous, that hadn't loaded up on previous starts and I had forgotten I'd ever had open. However closing them manually did seem to work for me

Thanks

Paul

There are doznes of them. Surely there has to ba an easier way. i really mis it now I don;t have it installed. Can someone from RedGate chime in?

kondrich

There is a new version 0.4.2.152 available since March, 7th. Though it requires SSMS 2012 to be closed during install (a great hope), it's just available in SSMS versions lower than 2012 after install. Once more dissappointed.

JonathanWatts

Hi there,

An early access release of SQL Tab Magic is now available to download from http://download.red-gate.com/EAP/SQLTab ... bMagic.zip and includes the following new features and enhancements:
- Support for SQL Server Management Studio 2012.
- Redesign of the user interface.
- Single dialog for searching all tabs.
- Empty tabs are no longer included in tab history nor opened on startup.
- Stability and performance improvements.

This is the last release of SQL Tab Magic as a standalone product. The next early access release will incorporate SQL Tab Magic in SQL Prompt.

We’d love to hear what you think. If you have any feedback, please leave a comment or email eapprompt@red-gate.com

We are aware of a problem whereby all tabs are reopened when you launch SQL Server Management Studio, rather than only the tabs that were open when SQL Server Management Studio was last closed. If you encounter this problem, please email eapprompt@red-gate.com

Many thanks,

Jonathan Watts
- Red Gate