Intellisense for JOINs in SQL Server Management Studio

Question

In SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) is there an option to enable intellisense auto-completion for JOINs?

For example, if I type:

SELECT * FROM Employee INNER JOIN _

at this point I would like intellisense to give me the tables related to Employee, and when I pick one to fill in the appropriate join condition, based on the foreign key relationships.

LinqPad does this for LINQ queries, which is great. I would like the same in SSMS. I am using SqlServer 2012.

Answer 1

Microsoft still have a long way to go for their implementation of intellisense to catch up to Red-Gate SQLPrompt. Even in SQL 2012 it is at a bare minimum.

Red-Gate SQL Prompt has merged with Red-Gate SQL Refactor which means that in addition to intellisense you get a number of features to help with code layout/format, find unused variables, summarise your scripts etc.

When you factor in the ability to attach snippets of code to acronyms then for me its a killer app.

If you have the money to buy SQLPrompt I would certainly recommend it.

Answer 2

I use devart's SQL Complete. As of this writing, it is half the price of Red Gate's SQL Prompt and has a similar feature-set. They have demo of their auto JOIN completion here: http://www.devart.com/dbforge/sql/sqlcomplete/images/join-clause-auto-generation.gif .

They offer a free version that is slightly better than SSMS 2008's Intellisense, but it does not include the auto JOIN suggestions of their paid versions.

Unfortunately, I have yet to run across a free tool offering what you seek.