dbForge SQL Complete is a free add-in for Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) that replaces built-in IntelliSense® with more powerful autocomplete features to speed up typing of T-SQL queries and brings more comfort as well as productivity to your work.

Besides extending List Members, Complete Word and Parameter Info features, SQL Complete adds SQL Formatter to enrich the developer toolkit and provide the fastest T-SQL query typing ever possible.

What does it mean for you?

List Members

You do not have to remember the names of objects in your database. When typing SQL statements, you will see a list of objects from the selected database or schema, names of table columns, and even keywords matching the context.

Complete Word

Instead of typing the whole database object name, you can just type first several characters. If SQL Complete finds only one match, it automatically inserts it to complete the word.

Parameter Info

When calling any built-in or user-defined function in your query, you can see a hint with information about the function and parameters it requires.

SQL Formatter

You can effortlessly get all your SQL code formatted based on one or another style. It takes only to set required rules by using a wide selection of formatting options. SQL Complete automatically formats SQL statements paying attention to case, line breaks, whitespaces, indenting, wrapping, etc.

Why is SQL Complete better than SSMS native IntelliSense®?

One of the main reasons to choose SQL Complete is that it provides Intellisense for SQL Server 2000, 2005, 2008, regardless of SSMS versions. Native intellisense does not work with those SQL Server versions that differ from your SMSS version. For example, SQL Server Management Studio 2008 will work with SQL Server 2008 only.

Is this not enough? Or are you still asking a reasonable question, “Why should I need a third-party tool besides the standard intellisense functionality?” Look at the feature comparison matrix and decide.

Key Features

• Context-based SQL code completion (view)
• Smart filtering to suggest relative keywords and objects (view)
• Quick parameter info for functions and procedures (view)
• Customizable SQL formatting (view)
• Support of SQL Server 2000, 2005 and 2008
• More features

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SQL Server 2008 (Katmai) introduces VSTA as our new scripting engine, which replaces the old VSA engine used in SQL Server 2005 (Yukon). There are a number of advantages to the new engine, but I think the feature users are most excited about is that it allows you to use C# as a scripting language (as well as VB.NET). It also makes it easier to reference all .Net assemblies, which enables a number of common scenarios (such as easier web service integration).

Data Flow Task Improvements

Michael Entin provided a great write-up for the enhancements to our data flow engine. It essentially boils down to smarter thread allocation and processing of our execution trees. Long chains of synchronous transforms are optimized, and most packages will see a performance increase on multi-processor machines.

One CPU usage graph I really like is the one shown at PASS this year:

This shows Yukon package execution on a quad CPU machine. You can see CPU #4 is used steadily, while two others spike occasionally. It also looks like usage goes down on #2 when it goes up on #3, and vice versa.

Running the same package using the Katmai engine looks like this:

This graph shows much better CPU usage distribution. In this case, the package received an 80% performance increase, but your mileage may vary.

Enhanced ADO.Net Support

Katmai now has an ADO.Net source (replacing the DataReader source) and destination adapters. They function a lot like the OLEDB ones, supporting a custom UI, drop down list of tables/views, and query builder. Its properties are also expression-able. This means we now support ODBC as a destination, as well.

Import/Export Wizard

The SQL Server Import/Export Wizard (which generates SSIS packages) has been improved as well.

• ADO.Net support (which gives you ODBC)
• Data type conversion – mappings are read from customizable (xml) files, and data convert transforms will be inserted into the data flow if required
• Scales better – large numbers of tables will be split across multiple data flows (up to five sources per data flow)

Here is an example of the data conversion page:

Cached Lookup

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Jamie Thompson provided a very good write up of the new lookup component. The main feature is that you can now create a lookup cache in a separate data flow using the new Lookup Cache Transform and Cache Connection Manager, and persist it to disk. This cache can be created from any data source supported by SSIS, which removes the need to stage your lookup table in a database.

This persisted cache is especially useful in scenarios where reference data is updated periodically – say, once a week. You can run a package to generate your cache when the update comes in, and re-use it in the rest of your packages until it needs to be updated again.

Another scenario is managing large lookup tables, where a small number of keys are used a large percentage of the time. For example, 5% of your customer IDs show up in 80% of your rows. Instead of caching the entire lookup table, you can use a cached lookup for the top 5%, and cascade another lookup in partial / no-cache mode for the infrequent rows.

As you can see from the screen shot, Lookup also has a new "No Match" output – rows with no matches aren’t directly sent to the error output anymore. We also maintain a "Miss Cache" internally, so missing keys aren’t constantly re-queried.

http://blogs.msdn.com/mattm/archive/2008/01/10/what-s-new-in-sql-server-2008-for-ssis-part-one.aspx

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The expressions language is a C style syntax, so you may need to escape certain characters, for example:

"C:\FolderPath\" + @FileName

Should be
"C:\\FolderPath\\" + @FileName

Another use of the escape sequence allows you to specify character codes, like this \xNNNN, where NNNN is the Unicode character code that you want. For example the following expression will produce the same result as the previous example as the Unicode character code 005C equals a back slash character:

"C:\x005CFolderPath\x005C" + @FileName

For more information about Unicode characters see http://www.unicode.org/charts/

Literals are also supported within expressions, both string literals using the common escape sequence syntax as well as modifiers which influence the handling of numeric values. See the "Literals (SSIS)":http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-US/library/ms141001(SQL.90).aspx topic.

Using the Unicode escaped character sequence you can make up for the lack of a CHAR function or equivalent.

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Post tags: Escaping In SSIS Expressions

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-- Revoke EXECUTE permissions from public on all extended stored procedures. These procedures
-- aid attackers in compromising your server and network.
USE master
 
DECLARE DangerousStoredProcedures CURSOR STATIC READ_ONLY FOR
SELECT name
FROM sys.all_objects
WHERE TYPE = 'X' OR (TYPE = 'P' AND name LIKE 'xp%')
 
DECLARE
@SpName sysname,
@FullCommand nvarchar(4000)
 
OPEN DangerousStoredProcedures
FETCH NEXT FROM DangerousStoredProcedures INTO @SpName
 
WHILE (@@FETCH_STATUS = 0) BEGIN
SET @FullCommand = 'REVOKE EXECUTE ON [' + @SpName + '] FROM public'
EXEC sp_executesql @FullCommand
 
FETCH NEXT FROM DangerousStoredProcedures INTO @SpName
END
 
DEALLOCATE DangerousStoredProcedures 
 
 
-- Prevent users from seeing metadata for databases they can't access.
-- Unfortunately users can still enumerate all database names via db_name
-- This makes database enumeration slightly slower, but that's irrelevant in
-- scenarios.
USE master
REVOKE VIEW ANY DATABASE FROM public
 
 
-- Don't give msdb access by default. Grant access only to users who need it.
USE msdb
REVOKE CONNECT TO guest
 
 
-- View server permissions
SELECT
	State_Desc, Permission_Name, class_desc,
	COALESCE(OBJECT_NAME(major_id),DB_NAME(major_id)) SecurableName, SCHEMA_NAME(O.schema_id) [Schema],
	Grantees.Name GranteeName, Grantees.Type_Desc GranteeType
FROM sys.server_permissions Perms
INNER JOIN sys.server_principals Grantees ON Perms.Grantee_Principal_Id = Grantees.Principal_Id
LEFT OUTER JOIN sys.all_objects O ON Perms.major_id = O.object_id
ORDER BY SecurableName
 
-- View membership in Server roles
SELECT Roles.Name, Roles.Type_Desc, Members.Name MemberName, Members.Type_Desc
FROM sys.server_role_members RoleMembers
INNER JOIN sys.server_principals Roles ON Roles.Principal_Id = RoleMembers.Role_Principal_Id
INNER JOIN sys.server_principals Members ON Members.Principal_Id = RoleMembers.Member_Principal_Id
 
 
-- Keep the vagabonds out, make the  database invite only.
IF (db_name() NOT IN ('master', 'tempdb')) REVOKE CONNECT TO guest
 
-- Move all of the permissions given to public to FormerPublic
CREATE ROLE FormerPublic
 
DECLARE PublicPermissions CURSOR STATIC READ_ONLY FOR
SELECT
	Permission_Name,
	COALESCE(O.name, DB_NAME(Perms.major_id)) SecurableName,
	SCHEMA_NAME(O.schema_id) [Schema]
FROM sys.database_permissions Perms
INNER JOIN sys.database_principals Grantees ON Perms.Grantee_Principal_Id = Grantees.Principal_Id
LEFT OUTER JOIN sys.all_objects O ON Perms.major_id = O.object_id
WHERE Grantees.Name = 'public' AND Grantees.Type_Desc = 'DATABASE_ROLE'
 
DECLARE
	@PermissionName	sysname,
	@SecurableName	sysname,
	@SchemaName		sysname,
	@Arguments		nvarchar(4000),
	@FullCommand	nvarchar(4000)
 
OPEN PublicPermissions
 
FETCH NEXT FROM PublicPermissions
INTO @PermissionName, @SecurableName, @SchemaName
 
WHILE (@@FETCH_STATUS = 0) BEGIN
	IF (@SecurableName IS NOT NULL) BEGIN
		SET @Arguments = @PermissionName + ' ON '
			+ COALESCE('[' + @SchemaName + '].', '') + '[' + @SecurableName + ']'
 
		SET @FullCommand = 'REVOKE ' + @Arguments + ' FROM public'
		EXEC sp_executesql @FullCommand
 
		SET @FullCommand = 'GRANT ' + @Arguments + ' TO FormerPublic'
		EXEC sp_executesql @FullCommand
	END
 
	FETCH NEXT FROM PublicPermissions
	INTO @PermissionName, @SecurableName, @SchemaName
END
 
DEALLOCATE PublicPermissions

Learn more

• Microsoft’s SQL2005 Security Best Practices document
• SQL Books Online offer Security Considerations for SQL Server
• Adam Machanic wrote a short and sweet list of Top 10 Security Enhancements in SQL Server 2005
• Don Kiely’s MSDN article on SQL Server Security
• Read about Schemas in SQL Books Online

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Post tags: Lock Down SQL Server 2005

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Helpful information and examples on how to use SQL Server Integration Services.

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I needed string.Format in SQL just now, so I made it up (not very exciting but nicer than writing nested REPLACE statements. YMMV

DROP FUNCTION dbo.fnFormatString
GO
CREATE FUNCTION dbo.fnFormatString(@format varchar(6000),
    @arg1 sql_variant,
    @arg2 sql_variant='',
    @arg3 sql_variant='')
RETURNS varchar(8000)
AS
BEGIN
RETURN  REPLACE(
    REPLACE(
    REPLACE(@format, '{0}', CAST(@arg1 as varchar(400))),
    '{1}', CAST(@arg2 as varchar(400))),
    '{2}', CAST(@arg3 as varchar(400)))
END
GO
PRINT dbo.fnFormatString('This {0} of works like {1} in that langauge {2}'
    , 'sorta'
    , 'string.Format()'
    , 'C#')

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Richard has posted a short, helpful script to audit data definition (CREATE, DROP, ALTER) SQL statements to a central table using a simple trigger and the XML data type. This means I can keep an audit trail of schema changes, along with all the information available (user name, date & time, SQL statement, etc.)

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Post tags: Database Schema change auditing

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• T-SQL Debugger is back
• Object Search is back
• Activity Monitor has effectively been rewritten to improve perf and usefulness

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Post tags: SQL 2008, VS2008, Windows Sever 2008

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