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A tool to search, browse and view MS SQL object definition scripts.

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SqlTools

An application for searching and browsing object scripts on Microsoft SQL Servers.

SqlTools can search by any or all of the following:

  • Object Name
  • Schema Name
  • Object Definition - you can search inside the text of the objects' definitions

Can you show me what it looks like?

Yes.

This is the interface for locating objects by searching on the SQL Server:

Code View Interface

Clicking the "Script" button gets the SQL object definition for that object and then displays it to you in this interface:

Code View Interface

Why do we need yet another way to view and script objects on MSSQL?

In my daily job I do a lot of prod support work on servers containing dozens of databases, many of which have several thousand objects. I constantly need to find stored procs, views, etc. by name, but most of the time I don't remember the FULL name of the object I'm looking for. To make matters worse, a lot of times I don't even remember which database it's in.

The search interface(s) in SQL Management Studio were always very cumbersome, so most of the time I was running queries like this over and over:

select *
from foo.sys.tables t
where t.name like '%something%'

...so I decided to make an application that would do this for me, with the added benefit of searching across all databases on a server (if desired) as well as also searching within the objects' definitions as well.

I have come across tools that do similar things, but they had one or more of the following problems:

  • They were very buggy
  • They tried to do too much and didn't have enough focus on just finding stuff
  • They were super-expensive

Can you tell me other interesting facts about this thing?

Sure, I've got nothing better to do...

  • Supports auth via Windows or SQL login with username/password
  • The app's icon is a totally awesome "recliner" because it makes your life so much easier, you'll have more time to relax in your easy chair
  • When searching for objects on the server:
    • Allows you to search by object name, schema name and/or within object definition (including tables!)
    • Can search across individual DB's on a server or all of them
    • Searching across all DB's on a server doesn't generally impact the system too much
    • Each query against an individual database is run asynchronously, so searching on a server with a large number of DB's will still happen quickly
    • After you search, you can use somewhat sophisticated filtering techniques to narrow down those results on the client-side
  • When viewing object definition scripts

Requirements

  • .net 4.5 or higher
    • ...although you could probably convert the project to 4.0 easily if you wanted to
  • An MS SQL 2008 or higher database
    • Most of the testing and dev has been against SQL 2008 with some limited usage against 2012 and 2014. So it should be fine.
    • All editions of "SQL Server" should work - LocalDB, SQLExpress and various flavors of "full" SQL Server are all fine. The only requirement here is that you need to know how to construct the connection info.

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A tool to search, browse and view MS SQL object definition scripts.

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