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SQL Query Analyzer – A missed friend

SQL Query Analyzer was an excellent tool that shipped with SQL Server up until SQL Server 2000. It was a small, lightweight query tool that didn’t pretend to be anything more than it was – a simple query tool. From SQL Server 2005 onwards, SQL Query Analyzer was replaced by it’s much bigger counterpart – SQL Server Management Studio – which rolled both Query Analyzer and Enterprise Manager into one unit.

Some people find the integrated approach works for them – but others (the Atlantis team included) found themselves wishing that there was a tool out there which loaded quickly and gave simple and direct access to SQL Server’s native language – Transact-SQL.

Some examples of code completion in SQL Everywhere

Many people never liked Enterprise Manager – it was slow to load, tried to offer every aspect of management of SQL Server, and even had its own inbuilt query building GUI. However, it did none of these things well. That legacy was directly imported into SQL Server Management Studio – A tool that, like it’s predecessor, tries to achieve everything, but excels at nothing.

It was for this reason that SQL Everywhere was born. The Atlantis team wanted a tool that had the same lightweight approach as SQL Query Analyzer, but added the functionality that it needed to bring it right into the 21st Century. With that in mind, we engineered SQL Everywhere to be fast and efficient, and let you get to work straight away. Ok, so it’s not as lightweight as SQL Query Analyzer, but it is fast, and is engineered to let you get to work straight away.

The features that SQL Everywhere adds are as follows:

SQL Intellisense®
Get help writing SQL when you need it most – SQL Everywhere will suggest object names, column names, built in function names and even keywords – just when you need them.
Auditing
SQL Everywhere remembers every query you run – and stores not only the query, but the results, messages and errors produced. Search your audit trail to find that query that didn’t get saved…
Refactoring
Format your SQL code, expand wildcards, rename variables and sub-queries, auto-alias your identifiers
Integrated object & data scripting
Script objects simply by right clicking on their name in the SQL editor – no more finding the object in the object tree manually
Database registration & grouping
Register the databases you use and store your credentials securely – set a default context for the project you’re working on, and you’ll find you can get to work straight away without needing to manually connect every time
Code library
Store the code you use most often in your code library, available from the right click menu in the editor
Multiple execution
Execute a query against multiple databases at once – got an upgrade script to run on 400 databases? Not a problem.
Result set comparison
Compare any two result sets that have the same schema – want to check that stored procedure optimisation produced the correct results? You’re covered.

SQL Everywhere multiple execution displays

So, SQL Everywhere is our tribute to SQL Query Analyzer – taking all the best bits of a long lost friend, and adding the functionality it really needed to take it forward. We hope that you’ll enjoy using it just as much as we do.