DaveBoltman
Hi MS, the 2005 Manangement Studio looks great, but ......... Based on a comment in http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx PostID=290394&SiteID=1 where MS says "It is our goal to provide consistent experience to both developers and database administrators regardless of which IDE they choose to use."
Here are some sad inconsistencies...
1\ In the Open Table query designer (ie right click on table, then Open Table), ctrl-1, ctrl-2, ctrl-3 and ctrl-4 open the Diagram, SQL, Criterior and Results panes respectively - this is extremely handy. But if you open a query in a different way (eg: clicking New Query, or File > New > Query with Current Connection), then ctrl-3 and ctrl-4 do...... nothing, and ctrl-1 and ctrl-2 open some other wierd secret undocumented queries. This is inconsistent and frustrating if you're designing 50 queries a day. Please could these keys always do the same things
2\ In all Microsoft products since before 1990, F5 means Refresh. If you're building a query by clicking the New Query button in SSMS, it refreshes! Woo hoo!! This is not a big deal. But if you start building a query by Open Table, then it doesn't. This IS a big deal. Its ctrl-X here. Please make F5 do F5's job.
3\ It's annoying that in oder to design a query (where the results pane works), you first have to open a whole table. The Books Online says "In Object Explorer, right-click the Tables node for the database you want to query. and click Open Table. From the Query Designer menu, select Add Table. In the Add Table dialog box, select the tables you want to query and click Add for each one.... From the Query Designer menu, choose Execute SQL to run your query. "
It would seem that you shouldn't need to open a specific table first to make a query - I just want a blank query design - that's all - I want F5 to work, and I want to see my results in the results pane.... none of the usual Microsoft "for dummies" philosophy - give me - the developer - the power - don't assume what I'm trying to.
4\ In the "Design Query in Editor" window (the modal one), ctrl-4 inconsistently does not open a results pane, like it does in the Open Table editor. There is no results pane here
5\ In the "Design Query in Editor" window (the modal one), you can right-click a table, and click Properties to set the table alias (I use this all the time). But in the Open Table editor (after pressing ctrl-1 here to get the Diagram View), there is no Properties option in the context menu for tables - you can't set the table alias. You have allowed the user to add new tables / views etc, so you are intending this to be a full-on query designer. Table Properties should work here.
6\ If you type just "SELECT * FROM tblDummy" in a New Query editor window, click "Design Query in Editor" to get the modal version of the graphic query designer, then all the fields are checked, rather that the *. Press OK to get back, then the * in your query is replaced by all the fields. Please could just the * box be checked (this seems obvious)
7\ If you're designing a query in the text editor and click "Design Query in Editor", you have to first select the text of the query. What are you assuming here, Microsoft Just use the query i've typed - just like when pressing F5 (I mean ctrl-X)
8\ Sometimes clicking New Query just opens a new query window without asking you to log into a new connection, and sometimes it inconsistently doesn't - you have to type your password and logon to the server again.
Thanks
________________________________________________
Dave Boltman
MS SQL Power Developer, but considering becoming a MySQL Power Developer
Re: SQL 2005 Management Studio Query Designer suggestions / questions
zuomin
No1. They are different cases. I treat it as context aware.
No2. Stongly agree. it's common accepted shortcut. It should be consistent.
Lots of shortcut in VS2005 are inconsistent in different versions. It's really frustrating.
No8. I think the idear behind this design it just to save users' time. In most cases it actually does.
And also you can easily change the connection to anyone you want.
BTW: I'm curious about how could you find out so many secret shortcuts like ctrl+1, ctrl+2 ...
Can it be found at the corner of some dialog or menu
Thanks,
Zuomin
No1. They are different cases. I treat it as context aware.
No2. Stongly agree. it's common accepted shortcut. It should be consistent.
Lots of shortcut in VS2005 are inconsistent in different versions. It's really frustrating.
No8. I think the idear behind this design it just to save users' time. In most cases it actually does.
And also you can easily change the connection to anyone you want.
BTW: I'm curious about how could you find out so many secret shortcuts like ctrl+1, ctrl+2 ...
Can it be found at the corner of some dialog or menu
Thanks,
Zuomin
Re: SQL 2005 Management Studio Query Designer suggestions / questions
Steve Kass
Zuomin,
About the "secret shortcuts":
In SQL Server Management Studio, the shortcuts Ctrl+1, Ctrl+2, etc. can be configured in Tools|Options|Environment|Keyboard.
These shortcuts do not apply in a modal dialog like Query Designer. As far as I can see, the different behavior of CTRL+1, etc. (view/hide a particular pane) in the designer are not documented.
Steve Kass
Drew University
http://www.stevekass.com
Re: SQL 2005 Management Studio Query Designer suggestions / questions
Steve Kass
Dave,
First of all, if you have suggestions for the SQL Server developers at Microsoft, I can assure you they want to hear them, but please post them at the SQL Server product feedback site. Here's the link:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/ linkid=34178
While I'm no fan of the query designer (you can see my suggestions and bug reports on the product feedback site), I can reply to some of your observations:
3) I would call this a bug, but not exactly an inconsistency bug. Open Table is simply the wrong place to write a query. (The query designer is wrong, too, I think, but Open Table is really wrong!) Either there should be a "New Query" item in the context menu, or the documentation should tell you to open a blank query editor window and choose Design Query in Editor from there.
4-5) You do raise a good issue that there seems to be more than one query designer tool. Instead of putting effort into making these separate tools consistent, they should remove all query designer features from Open Table (and fix the documentation) so no one mistakes or misuses that tool as a query designer.
6) It's not so obvious. First of all, if * is checked, what do you want to see in the criteria pane (Think of programming the designer - keeping the checkboxes in 1-1 relationship with the rows of the criteria pane is much easier than having a special case for the * checkbox.) And it's good practice not to use *, but list all column names explicitly instead, at least in production code.
7) Yes, this is confusing, but a query editor window can contain all kinds of things beyond just a single query. Again, this is a consistency issue for the programmers - it's work with little benefit to parse what's in the editor just to see if it is a single query or not, so that if it's a single query, it opens in the designer.
If you do post your suggestions to the product feedback site, perhaps you could post links to your suggestions here. That way more people might learn about the product feedback site, and people reading this thread might visit your suggestions and vote on them. Votes make a difference to Microsoft when they prioritize non-critical issues.
Steve Kass
Drew University
http://www.stevekass.com
Re: SQL 2005 Management Studio Query Designer suggestions / questions
DaveBoltman
Hi Zuomin
Yes I suppose I should think of these as different situations/contexts
These are the same as SQL 2000 Enterprise Manager - I thought these were the standards, and the other configuarable shortcuts (in Tools > Options > Keyboard) were secret - until Steve helped to see the light
Just a pity that there is no docs here, and that SSMS uses the (more useful when designing queries) undocumented keys more often than the documented ones.
Hi Zuomin
Yes I suppose I should think of these as different situations/contexts
zuomin wrote:
BTW: I'm curious about how could you find out so many secret shortcuts like ctrl+1, ctrl+2 ...
Can it be found at the corner of some dialog or menu
These are the same as SQL 2000 Enterprise Manager - I thought these were the standards, and the other configuarable shortcuts (in Tools > Options > Keyboard) were secret - until Steve helped to see the light
Just a pity that there is no docs here, and that SSMS uses the (more useful when designing queries) undocumented keys more often than the documented ones.Re: SQL 2005 Management Studio Query Designer suggestions / questions
DaveBoltman
Thanks Steve for that - good to know about the SQL Server product feedback site - I'll definitely post them, but gonna use this as a sort of a blog to first get my thoughts in order (so what I say is consistent
As to item 6, one can already check the * box in the graphical query designers, and they do a good job blocking a filter condition for the * row in the criterior pane as expected - and as SQL 2000 Enterprise Manager did so well - it just makes sense (to me at least) to have me tell the designer what I'm trying to do, not the other way round. When I'm ready to list all fields, then ... it will cooperate (evil grin)
If you have access to any of the old printed MS Excel manuals - about '96 or '98 I think, there is a very clear explanation n the forward of Microsoft's "for dummies" philosophy with that product - that the program tries to figure what you're trying to do, so you don't have to understand how computers and technology work - you can just get the job done as quickly as possible. It seems however to be an all encompassing MS philosophy since early days till now - taking away the programmers' power - GRRRRRRRRRRR
Mmmmmmm - will have to think about what you say for production code to list all fields - yes I suppose it makes it clear what the query is doing. (also makes it more difficult to edit the query, as well as dependent views etc.)
As to Item 7 - aha yes of course you're right - thanks
As to Item 3 :
|
|
Open Table |
Query Designer |
New Query |
|
Remarks |
A Graphical Query Designer |
Another Graphical Query Designer |
Non-graphical editor with full T-SQL capabilities ¨C ie: not just a query designer |
|
ctrl-1, 2, 3, 4 do what |
Show or hide the Diagram, Criterior, SQL and Results Pane |
Same, but no Results pane, so ctrl-4 does nothing |
As per settings in Options > Environment > Keyboard |
|
F5 works |
No |
No |
Yes |
|
Modal |
No |
Yes |
No |
|
Can see results |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
|
Table Properties in context menu |
No |
Yes |
N/A |
Re: SQL 2005 Management Studio Query Designer suggestions / questions
Steve Kass
To each his own. I don't mind programs guessing what I want when they guess right, but when Excel started in this direction, it decided teachers across the country wanted to give their students B-minuses when they wanted to give them B's, because of autocomplete. It also decided that some genetics researchers must be entering dates in some cases, not names of genes. And the query designer (like the Enterprise Manager tools it succeeded) is an order of magnitude worse than Excel. The Query designer randomly (ok, not randomly, but according to no sane rules) changes queries into other queries that mean other things. Not the very simple ones, though, and therein lies the key. Microsoft needs to replace the query designer with a "simple query designer", as in "of simple queries," make Open Table only a tool for "opening" (whatever that means) tables, not writing queries, and redesign the query designer from the ground up to be something like they ["they" not being MSFT] had in Paradox version 7 for visually building a subclass of queries.
Back when Enterprise Manager was new, it was the only game in town that didn't start with C:\>. Now things have changed, and the EM-style query designer should be retired, not put on life support.
SK
To each his own. I don't mind programs guessing what I want when they guess right, but when Excel started in this direction, it decided teachers across the country wanted to give their students B-minuses when they wanted to give them B's, because of autocomplete. It also decided that some genetics researchers must be entering dates in some cases, not names of genes. And the query designer (like the Enterprise Manager tools it succeeded) is an order of magnitude worse than Excel. The Query designer randomly (ok, not randomly, but according to no sane rules) changes queries into other queries that mean other things. Not the very simple ones, though, and therein lies the key. Microsoft needs to replace the query designer with a "simple query designer", as in "of simple queries," make Open Table only a tool for "opening" (whatever that means) tables, not writing queries, and redesign the query designer from the ground up to be something like they ["they" not being MSFT] had in Paradox version 7 for visually building a subclass of queries.
Back when Enterprise Manager was new, it was the only game in town that didn't start with C:\>. Now things have changed, and the EM-style query designer should be retired, not put on life support.
SK