SQL Server Pro - May 2013

a table) referenced in a code module and pressing F12 will take you to the DDL that defines that object. Very handy indeed.

Find all references. Find all references, another code navigation feature, shows you all code modules in which an object is referenced. In some ways, this is the inverse of the F12 code navigation that I mentioned earlier—indeed, it’s accessed by placing your cursor on the object in question and pressing Shift+F12.

IntelliSense. IntelliSense is a feature that helps you to write your code by making suggestions as to what you might type next. For example, if you type the name of a schema and press the period key (.), IntelliSense will present a list of tables in that schema from which you can choose, as shown in Figure 3.

It’s worth noting that if you’re used to other languages where IntelliSense is implemented well (such as the .NET family of languages), your expectations for this feature will most likely not be met—T-SQL IntelliSense isn’t a patch on .NET IntelliSense. I’ve spoken to a person who writes code parsers, and he claimed that parsing T-SQL code is significantly more difficult than more modern languages such as C#—thus it’s more difficult to write an IntelliSense engine that works flawlessly. Nonetheless, I’m of the opinion that IntelliSense is still a useful feature. (I find a competing IntelliSense product from Red Gate Software called SQL Prompt to be better than Microsoft’s offering.)

Table designer. SSDT features a brand-new table designer that provides both a graphical and scripted representation of a table, as shown in Figure 4. What sets this table designer apart from other similar designers you might have seen is that you can edit the table definition by either using the GUI or by editing the script directly.