3.5 RC Initial Impressions

paschott

I like:
Cross-database queries - looks like they are working again!
Speed improvements - quite a few. I can replace a value now without going to make a pot of coffee.
Refresh Cache hot-key - much needed.
(Note using SSMS for all of the above)

Minor issues:
Seem to have lost some of my authentication info during the upgrade from 3.1. I've had to re-type it several times.

Column order - the original versions of PromptSQL and SQLPrompt had options to keep the column order of the DB - maybe I'm missing this, but I couldn't find it and I get alphabetical sorts on my column names.

Really fast auto-complete - in this case a little too fast. I'm going to tweak the settings to try to give myself a little more time to use an alias such as "i" and not have the auto-complete automatically give me a snippet, function, or table starting with the letter "I".

-Pete

paschott

Add another issue to the list. Sometimes when I have typed in an alias for a table (same database) or had an alias chosen for the table I selected, I am prompted to connect to that alias as a database. Once I hit "Cancel" SQL Prompt works as expected, but it's kind of annoying.

I'll see if I can easily repro outside of my current query window. I know that it's happening quite a bit in this current window.

-Pete

Bart Read

Hi Pete,


Thanks for downloading and thanks for the feedback. Glad you like the tool overall, and sorry about the teething problems.

In the first case with the ultra-aggressive auto-complete I'd suggest increasing the popup delay time slightly, and you should find that improves things.

On the connection details front I can only apologise. SQL Prompt 3.5 shouldn't trash your settings but it seems like the upgrade process isn't entirely perfect. I'll make sure we take a look at this over the next few days.

With regard to the spurious connection issue this is something we're obviously going to have to look into a little further. It's not always possible for SQL Prompt to accurately determine whether or not a database really does exist, however I spent quite a lot of time tweaking this behaviour to stop these spurious connection requests happening and we've not been able to reproduce them here for a while, however that's not to say the problem's entirely fixed: just that we haven't found a hole in it ourselves yet, which of course is part of the reason for letting people have a play with it.

Anyway, back to the point: is there any chance you could send me a SQL snippet that would reproduce this behaviour please? It doesn't really matter what you're querying against because I should be able to modify the query to work with one of our databases no problem.

Also could you let me know a few things about your server:

- SQL Server version
- Roughly how many databases it has on it
- Authentication mode (Windows/SQL Server)
- Do you log in as sa, or with admin privileges on the server, or are you just dbo on particular databases?
- Do you have any linked servers configured?
- Do you have any databases or linked servers whose names are the same as any aliases you're using?

And really if there's anything else you think might be relevant even if it seems very minor please do let me know.


Thanks,
Bart

paschott

I will need to see if I can re-create the problem. It happened after I used SSMS against a SQL 2000 SP4 server to Modify a proc, then copied part of that proc, selected everything, and pasted my section over the whole (I just needed to use that section of code for some custom work). After that, every time I aliased something it would prompt for a connection the first time I tried to use it and afterwards it would work as expected. If I can reproduce it I will definitely send it back.

The aliases were pretty short - a, ad, ip, ss - none of these overlapped an existing DB or linked server.

I'm logged in as a SQL Login, member of SysAdmin, but not "sa".

We have ~10-15 DB's on the server.

-Pete

Bart Read

OK thanks Pete. That's very odd. We'll try to reproduce it here as well.
Cheers,
Bart

paschott

Just an FYI - still seeing this behavior. I restarted my machine, connected to a basic database, and started typing - the first time I try to use an alias for the table, I'm prompted to connect for it. Afterwards it seems to work fine.

Also, when I used the cross-database join, it worked for the most part, but I didn't get a complete listing of tables. A table called "Pledge" didn't show up in the list for some reason. I'll try to reproduce. I'd already refreshed the cache before trying that so not completely sure what was going on.

-Pete