Join the Redgate Tool Tips Swap – win a Pluralsight subscription!

Roseanna

Hello everyone,

Share your Redgate tool tips to win a Pluralsight subscription!

Now more than ever, we need to make the most of our existing resources. To help you achieve more with your Redgate tools, we’ve launched the Redgate Tool Tips Swap.

To join in, please share your top tip for improving productivity with Redgate tools in the thread below.

The Redgate Tool Tips Swap closes on 15 January 2021. All tips collected will be shared with the Redgate community via our blog, forums and social media channels.*  

Plus, everyone who takes part will be entered into a prize draw for a 3-month subscription to Pluralsight (a leading online training provider).

Looking forward to hearing your tips 

Roseanna

*By taking part in the Redgate Tool Tips Swap, you give permission for us to share your tip on www.red-gate.com and on Redgate’s forums and social media channels.

Roseanna

Here's a tip to get us started 

Configure SQL Prompt's settings for your needs. SQL Prompt is a fantastic tool for working more efficiently. You can make it work even better for you by adjusting the settings for your needs. Redgate's Grant Fritchey has a short training course on this. 

Over to you. What are your tips for improving productivity with Redgate tools?

JustinBird

Well I'll kick things off! For me it's being able to consistently format code before checking in to source control by sharing formatting settings across the team. We keep ours alongside the code in source control so everyone can keep up to date. Adhering to code formats ensures "developer preference" doesn't result in false changes in the code base where a developer alters a block of code just to lay it out differently. The hardest part is getting the team to decide on a format!

JustinBird

There's another side to this - people have their own preferences for reading styles, so some devs might have their own style whilst they're coding and then simply "team format" it to be pushed to source control. Everybody wins!

Kendra_Little

As a Redgater, I'm ineligible to win, but I can't resist adding a tip!

In SQL Change Automation in Visual Studio, there's a hidden filter capability
When importing changes from a database to generate migrations, simply begin typing to filter out changes by object name.

ScottSauber

Something I find handy with SQL Prompt is the "Script as Insert" feature.  When you get the results back from running a query, you can highlight the entire data set (or just the rows you care about), then right-click and choose "Script as Insert."  This will scaffold out the insert statement for you inside of SSMS.

This is handy for scenarios such as generating a script to be used for re-seeding data for an integration test without having to write that insert by hand.

ScottSauber

Another handy one from SQL Prompt is the "Copy as IN clause" feature.  When you get the results back from running a query, you can highlight the entire column (or just the values you care about), then right-click and choose "Copy as IN clause."  This will save those values to your clip board as an IN statement.  So if you highlight values 1,2,3 it will put "IN (1,2,3)" onto your clipboard.

This is handy during data exploration and feeding values from one query into another, such as grabbing the ID's from one query and dropping them onto the where clause of another query.

JustinBird

Current statement execution! This one is super cool. Supposing you have a long code block with multiple separate statements in it, if you want to run a single block of code you have to highlight that block of code and hit execute / F5. You can do the same thing just by hitting SHIFT + F5. 

I've not been able to use prompt in recent assignments but current client uses Redgate so some things I'd long forgotten are coming back to me and that one just came to me today!

ben_b

I can share something I have done at three companies using Sql Source Control that has worked brilliantly  but probably only works if there are one or two developers co-located.  At the time we used SVN and TFVC and didn't use branching.  Also, I was pretty strict on one-piece flow.

It's not best practice but is so quick and easy to setup and move code around environments.

1.  Hook all your environments up to source control using the 'dedicated' model irrespective of whether you are using shared or dedicated environments.  for me, this included prod.
2.  Develop in your development environment and commit using Sql Source Control
3.  When you want to move the change to a test environment, just use the Get-Latest tab.  Same with production deployments.
4.  If you ever did need to do an emergency hot-fix in prod. Just push to source-control from there and make sure you get the latest on your development environment straight away.

Some people may baulk at this haha but I reckon I have done over 3,000 commits and 100's of production deployments using this method without ever running into a problem!!

It also means you only ever work in one tool, SSMS.  CI/CD pipelines are all the rage but imo they are not trivial to setup and they are not essential to building great software, especially for very small, tight-knit teams.

Also worth noting that this was on Data Warehouse projects and I had created automated tests so I knew early whether my changes would work - the tests just weren't triggered, i had to click a button

DaveDavis

We love the SQL Data Generator for some fun sets of data.  We import celebrity names and make them into funky alternatives.  Swapping the first and last names.  We take and make them live at public building addresses.  It's sometimes the only fun we have.  It makes clients laugh a little when we show demo reports to them.  

Roseanna

Haha, love that tip @DaveDavis

Thank you to everyone who has shared a tip so far! The Redgate Tool Tips Swap closes tonight. If you have any tips for increasing productivity with your Redgate tools, please do share them below.

Everyone who submits a tip will be entered into a prize draw to win a 3 month subscription to Pluralsight.

Roseanna

Thank you to everyone who submitted a tip in the Redgate Tool Tips Swap. We've really enjoyed reading them and will be sharing all your tips in a blog post on the Redgate Blog shortly - stay tuned!

I'm delighted to announce that the winner of a 3 month subscription to Pluralsight is.... @DaveDavis. Congratulations Dave   I'll send you a direct message to arrange delivery of your prize.

Best wishes,

Roseanna