dbForge Team Blog

Devart Team is glad to announce the new release of SQL Complete v3.5. It includes support of all versions and editions of SQL Server, column picker, extended T-SQL syntax support and many other features.

In the new version, we’ve made a huge effort to improve usability of our Intellisense and paid a lot of attention to the application quality in general. Together with the new features, meet new look of the suggestion list and new level of the usability of our application!

New features

• Support of SQL Server 2012 and SQL Server Compact Edition As support for the new version of SQL Server was introduced together with full support for Compact Edition, developers got an opportunity to use the advanced SQL Intellisense functionality with any server version and edition, starting with SQL Server 2000 and up to SQL Azure.
• Column picker feature New functionality will make it possible to create SELECT and INSERT queries, as it allows defining column lists for selecting, grouping, sorting and inserting without typing any code at all. The suggestion list appearance was changed – now it supports hierarchical view for table columns and shows information about data type.
• Intellisense in SQLCMD mode Scripts that are executed with the help of the command line utility, are usually parameterized. But often it is the reason of the fact that ability to show correct suggestions for objects is lost, because database or schema name can be a variable. Now SQL Complete solves this problem. Values of variables are taken from the text of the document and object suggestions work as with an ordinary SQL script.
• Automatic formatting of keywords on typing Keywords are formatted according to the option settings. This will help to avoid appearance of keywords written in different registry, when part of them was inserted from the suggestion list and part was typed manually.
• Extended and revised SQL Snippets We’ve revised existing code templates, added new ones, and changed the behavior of the suggestion list on selecting a template. This will allow choosing the needed template as quickly as possible and reducing time needed for typing recurring code constructions. Also keep in mind that users can create their own SQL snippets with the help of the special editor.
• Extended T-SQL syntax support Context-sensitive prompt of objects in the MERGE statement and a number of SQL Server 2012 T-SQL construction is supported.
• SQL formatting improved Formatting of procedure and function code, CASE statements, comments, and column list inserted on wildcard expansion is improved.
• Express edition feature set extended The free Express edition of our product is also improved. Now it supports SQL Server 2012 and SQL Server Compact Edition. Besides, information on columns is expanded, and hierarchical list structure that simplifies working with SELECT and INSERT statements is also available in the free edition.

Read the rest of this entry »

Since one of our users has encountered a problem when modifying data via Data Editor, we decided to bring such a situation to our users’ attention.

Let’s assume you have the following table:

CREATE TABLE dept(
  DeptNo INT(10),
  DName VARCHAR(14),
  loc VARCHAR(13),
  Salsum FLOAT
);

Let’s execute the following query in the SQL document:

SELECT DName, loc FROM dept WHERE DeptNo = 20;

Now if you change any of the values of the first record in Data Editor, the changes will be applied to all records of the original table that have ‘DName’ = ‘Research’ and ‘loc’ = ‘Dallas’.

It happens because when dbForge Studio for MySQL generates the internal UPDATE statement, only the fields returned by the previous query are included in the WHERE clause of the UPDATE statement. In our example DeptNo = 20 that was stated in the WHERE clause of the SELECT statement was not included in the internal UPDATE statement as there was no the ‘DeptNo’ field in the grid when modifying data.

So that if you’re planning to modify data that will be returned as a result of the SELECT statement in the grid, we suggest you to make sure that all the fields that are specified in the WHERE clause of the SELECT statement are also specified in the SELECT clause of the statement.

In our example, you have to specify the ‘DeptNo’ field in the SELECT clause of the statement.

SELECT DeptNo, DName, loc FROM dept WHERE DeptNo = 20;

Now if you modify any of the values of the records in Data Editor, the above actions will exclude accidental changes in the records that are not displayed in the grid.

Finally, to avoid such problems that may occur when modifying data that was returned as a result of the ‘SELECT’ statement inside of which the ‘WHERE’ clause is used, make sure you’re specifying the ‘*’ in the ‘SELECT’ clause or at least all the columns listed in the ‘WHERE’ clause of the statement.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

As Christmas holidays are drawing closer, we offer you to get 20% off any product license order.

Don’t think twice, just save 20%. And what more, you get free access to all future releases of the respective products for one year.

Hurry up, this offer is available only from December 01, 2011 till January 10, 2012. Decide and order right now.

We wish you all the best in the coming year, let joy and happiness be your constant partners and friends!

Best Christmas Wishes,
Devart Team

We’ve analysed user feedbacks received after the release of the completely redesigned dbForge Studio and defined prior points for further development of the product.

As a result we’ve devoted the new release of dbForge Studio for Oracle to improving the possibilities for users who work with PL/SQL code and data. And in addition we’ve improved the application performance and added support for Win-x64 platform.

dbForge Studio for Oracle v3.1

New Features

• 150 improvements in the code autocompletion system
  We’ve made nearly 150 changes and improvements in the dbForge Studio for Oracle component that helps users edit PL/SQL code. Among them:
  • Oracle SQL and PL/SQL syntax support is expanded
  • Work of quick info hints for schema objects is improved
  • Keywords case is changed automatically on typing (if the corresponding options are set)
  • Usability shortcomings and errors are fixed
• SQL document works with additional PL/SQL file types:
  • Support for editing .pls, .plb, .pks, .pkb, .pck Oracle PL/SQL files is added
  • Support for editing files with PL/SQL code created in some competitor products is added
• Data export to SQL statements
  • Possibility to export data to INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, and MERGE statements is added
  • Data can be exported from a table or data grid using a wizard
  • Quick export from data grid without opening wizard
• Convenient work with result sets of several SELECT queries
  If there is more than one SELECT statement in a document, after execution query results will be displayed on separate tabs in the Data window.Such approach allows working with each data set independently.
• Editing data of object fields
  The new product version provides possibility to edit data in object fields in tables using a pop-up editor.
• Support for editing temporary tables
  There is a capability to create and edit temporary tables in Table Editor.
• Document Outline window for code navigation is improved
  • Grouping nodes by IF, FOR, etc. flow-control statements blocks is added
  • Displaying labels and navigation among them is added
• More convenient working with query execution plan
  • Quick query plan obtaining (without turning the Profiling mode on) is added
  • Displaying of the EXPLAIN PLAN results without creating an additional table in the user’s scheme is added
• Performance improvements
  • Time required on application startup and connection opening is reduced
  • Building of the Database Explorer tree, refreshing it, and receiving table list is quicker now
  • Getting metadata for code completion becomes faster
  • Work of Schema Export with large amount of objects and data is improved
  • Data Editor working speed is increased
  • Object Viewer and Property Browser windows working speed is increased
  • Navigation to schema object editors from code is improved
• Win-x64 Native Support
  Now the application does not require 32-bit Oracle client software installed when working with 64-bit Windows operating system – the application works with 64-bit Oracle client software.

Availability

Consumers can give the updated dbForge Studio for Oracle a test drive by downloading the free Express edition or the 30-day trial Professional edition at the product download page. dbForge Studio license price starts at $149.95.

To leave feedback, users can go to the dbForge Studio for Oracle feedback page. The Devart team is looking forward to receiving any comments and suggestions.

Devart Team is glad to announce the new release of SQL Complete v3.1. The new version includes some improvements in both Standard and free Express editions to make your work easier, more effective and convenient.

SQL Complete SSMS add-in

New Features

• Linked servers support The new version of SQL Complete features support for IntelliSense when working with linked servers. Just imagine – now you can type your queries with the kind of IntelliSense you are accustomed to even when using all advantages of linked servers configuration!
• SQL statements support extended Standard edition provides support for GRANT, REVOKE, DENY, ENABLE/DISABLE TRIGGER, and ALTER SCHEMA statements.
• New Highlight Occurrences option The new option allows you to turn highlighting of occurrences on and off. Besides, all existing options were rearranged to improve product’s usability.

Improvements

• Usability of code completion improvement We revised rules for showing suggestion list especially when editing existing SQL queries. Now the suggestion list does not appear for arithmetic operations, numbers, and semicolons.
• Installation process customization We improved the product’s usability basing on users’ requests. Now you can select the development environment in which SQL Complete will function when installing the add-in – just select the needed environment from the list of available environments on a special page of the installation wizard.
• Tracing support We added tracing support for you to help us find and fix errors in our application – if you encountered any problems with SQL Complete, start tracing and send the created file to Devart afterwards.

Express Edition Extension

• SQL statements support extended Support for DROP, EXEC, DECLARE, and SET statements was added.
• Variables and parameters support
• Qualify Column Names option is available

Availability

Consumers can give the updated dbForge SQL Complete a test drive by downloading the 30-day trial Standard edition at the product download page. SQL Complete’s Standard edition is available for an estimated retail price of $99.95.

If you don’t need advanced code completion features but want to get more than SSMS IntelliSense can give, you are welcome to try free Express edition.

To leave feedback, users can go to the dbForge SQL Complete feedback page. The Devart team is looking forward to receiving any comments and suggestions.

Introduction
Debugging SQL code is a very important task these days. Unfortunately not all database servers support this feature. And MySQL is one of such servers. In spite of its wide feature set, debugging is not implemented in it. So the problem is that MySQL provides no API functionalities for code debugging. But the necessity to debug SQL code does not disappear and becomes more and more important each year. Some companies that develop tools to access data of MySQL server databases create their own debuggers that solve this problem to some extent.

Types of Debuggers
Now we will consider the types of debuggers that can be implemented for MySQL server and principles of their work.
Read the rest of this entry »

dbForge Studio for MySQL - Best IDE Product

Support Your Favorite Devart Products in 2011 DevProConnections Voting!

We would like to invite you to take part in 2011 DevProConnections voting. The Community Choice Awards, as presented by Windows IT Pro, SQL Server Magazine, and DevProConnections, allow you to decide, which IT products get chosen for acclaim and recognition.

This year Devart dbForge Studio for MySQL is nominated in the following category.

2011 DevProConnections Community Choice Awards:

Category 14 (page 2): Best IDE Product – dbForge Studio for MySQL

If you think that Devart’s MySQL GUI Client is worth of being the best in the given categories, vote now for your favourite Devart products:

2011 DevProConnections Community Choice Awards

With Best Wishes,
The Devart Team

When working on the new version of SQL Complete, we were focused on the idea of providing the most needed functionality to our users. Such course has already become the strategy of our product development. Our intention is not just to pack the product with features, but to give our users a tool that can make their work more effective. The result of this course was implementing more than a dozen of features and adding integration of SQL Complete with Visual Studio. We hope the integration will be useful for a wide range of prospective users.

Main New Features Highlights

New SQL Server versions support

SQL Server 2011 (codename Denali)
SQL Azure
SQL Server Compact edition

Added integration into Visual Studio

Visual Studio 2010: Professional, Premium, and Ultimate editions
Visual Studio 2008: Professional and Team System editions

“Go to definition” for database objects

This function allows navigating from code editor to the object in the Object Explorer (Server Explorer in VS) tree.

When the cursor is on the object identifier, the program will find the needed object and show it in the treeview on pressing F12 or clicking the corresponding item in the context menu.

If the object is declared in the script, the cursor will be moved to the beginning of its declaration.

Code Snippets

This feature makes it easy and convenient to use fragments of code over and over. The new functionality includes:

Showing code templates in the dropdown list
Opening templates on pressing Tab
Adding and editing templates with the help of templates manager
Possibility to add parameters to templates. Parameter values are entered by a user on inserting

New code completion features

IntelliSense for temporary tables and table variables
Expand EXEC statement feature. All parameters with value stoppers are inserted automatically on pressing Tab
sys.sp_* procedures are now suggested without schema prefix in EXEC statement
Expand ALTER statement for procedure, function, view, and trigger. Object body is inserted into the document automatically on pressing Tab
Suggestions for DROP statements added
Context-sensitive code completion for CREATE TRIGGER statement
Extended support for T-SQL DECLARE statement
Option for including default schema (dbo) into object name when pasting it into the text
Hierarchyid data type support in code completion

Document Outline window

This feature makes navigating through large SQL documents a real pleasure. The Document Outline window shows the structure of the current document. Besides, a user can synchronize structure with text right from the code.

Highlight occurrences of an identifier

This unique feature allows users to see all entries of an identifier in the document text. When the cursor is on the identifier, after a time lag all occurrences of this identifier into the text are highlighted.

SQL formatting component improved

Stream formatting for large documents. Application no longer hangs when formatting large SQL document. User can cancel the formatting process
Common table expression formatting supported
New formatting options for indenting JOIN clauses
Message for invalid statements

Quick database object information extended

Tool tip with parameters and descriptions of procedures and functions is shown
Tool tip with columns list when the mouse cursor hovers over the asterisk in the SELECT list is shown
For the alias in the FROM list, a table or expression with the list of columns is shown (if possible)
Now name, type, keys, and some other properties are shown for columns
Quick info is shown for the dropdown list items

“Execute current statement” feature

Now user can execute the current SQL statement (i.e. the one where the input cursor is located) in the document using the hot key.

Performance improvements

Formatting speed increased
Parsing speed of complex statements increased

What about SQL Complete Express?

Of course, most functionality is available only in the Standard edition of SQL Complete.

But all the same some improvements were made in the Express edition. There are the new features that were added:

Support for the new SQL Server versions
Visual Studio integration
SQL formatting component improvements
“Execute current statement” feature
Performance improvements

Availability

Consumers can give the updated dbForge SQL Complete a test drive by downloading the free Express edition or the 30-day trial Standard edition at the product download page. SQL Complete’s Standard edition is available for an estimated retail price of $49.95.

To leave feedback, users can go to the dbForge SQL Complete feedback page. The Devart team is looking forward to receiving any comments and suggestions.

Despite the fact that dbForge products were developed only for Windows platforms, our active users (thanks to Tsvetkov) have found a way to use some features of dbForge Studio for MySql on Linux family operating systems.

Tests were run under .Net Framework 2.0 on Wine emulator.

The following command line functionality works with no visible issues:

• /backup – backups a database
• /restore – restores a database
• /datacompare – launches a data comparison
• /datacompare /sync – launches a database synchronization
• /schemacompare – launches a schema comparison
• /schemacompare /sync – launches a database synchronization
• /dataexport (starting from version 5.0) – exports data
• /dataimport (starting from version 5.0) – imports data
• /execute – executes a script

Testing of the following GUI functionality completed with full success:

• Import Wizard
• Export Wizard
• Backup Wizard
• Restore Wizard
• SQL Formatter Wizard

Data comparison. We were able to perform data comparison operation with some limitations:

• there is no possibility to view differences between the records of the relevant objects
• Data Synchronization Wizard doesn’t work at all

Schema comparison. Testing of the schema comparison functionality finished with the following results:

• Schema Comparison Wizard works properly
• Schema Synchronization Wizard is supported excepting the possibility to view synchronization script for the object. However, you can save documents and use them as a command line argument

Stored procedures debugger. Works properly if you disregard the artifacts.

The rest of the functionality is associated with tool-windows or documents and mostly blocked because of problems with rendering. To avoid the issues associated with tool-windows, change the window status from Docked to Floating and vice versa.

If you are interested in using dbForge Studio for MySql on Linux, you can use the following installation recommendations:

1. Build wine with the following options:

app-emulation/wine-1.3.3 USE="X alsa dbus gecko jpeg ncurses opengl perl png ssl threads
truetype win32 xinerama xml (-capi) -cups -custom-cflags (-esd) -fontconfig -gnutls
(-gphoto2) -gsm (-hal) -jack -lcms -ldap -mp3 -nas -openal -oss -pulseaudio -samba (-scanner)
 -test -win64 -xcomposite"

2. Install to a new folder .wine files (optionally, but preferably)

3. Run:

- sh winetricks gdiplus

Note: Do not use gdiplus from wine (dbforge crashes with an error when starting)

4. Install dotnet20 (in Fedora13 the installation interrupts with an error):

- sh winetricks dotnet20

5. Run:

wine ./dbforgemysqlru.exe (installs with no visible issues)

Our company has been working on its own MySQL GUI client development for over 6 years. Many features were implemented in this product in accordance with our users’ requests, that acted as task originators for us. We are glad that the development process of our MySQL Front-End goes on and on, and we were able to release version 5.0 of the product. For the release of version 5.0, we decided to make a special video telling about the product history. You can see the result.

Funny video about history of our MySQL GUI tool

We did not intend to have a professional video made by clip-makers. The video was shot frame-by-frame using a common digital camera. After that jpg files were rendered to the mp4 video format. Shooting took almost 7 hours. All models were made by hand from plasticine by one of our employees, whose hobby is design and model-making. All of us want to thank him for this!