SqlDbx Development

SqlDbx current state and planned new features

2008-11-23T21:57:00.003-05:00

Currently working on version 3.27. It's almost done. Couple of things left to test and make sure nothing got broken. Big change in this release will be change to Editor. We are adding variable pitch font support. It's not that I personally like but we actually need to do it in order to support Asian and Chinese fonts. Even mono space Asian fonts have at least two different widths. Originally Editor was not designed to support variable fonts but it was surprisingly easy to add it. The only complicated thing is column selection mode. Another new feature is SQL formatter. Initial version has some quirks but pretty functional.
One request we getting a lot is to make possible to run SqlDbx from USB key without installing database client software on user computer. I think it is possible to do. The idea is to have all SqlDbx configuration stored in file instead of registry and then copy database client files to flash and then on startup set environment variables, create private registry entries in order to make database client think that it is installed.
Also will be adding ability to filter objects on a left pane. Looked at couple other products and how they do it. Did not find one I particularly like. I am thinking about doing it very in a different way.
Basically I want to make it look like SQL select statement. For example to show all tables whose name starts with "AB" and table named "MYTABLE" plus procedures with names like "*_production_*" you will enter something like this:
(TYPE == 'TABLE' and (NAME like 'AB*' or NAME == 'MYTABLE') or (TYPE == 'PROCEDURE' and NAME like '*_production_*')

TYPE and NAME are predefined column names. Some other columns are OWNER, DATE_CREATED.
One more suggestion from our users is to add ability to easy select child records when if you select parent record in Result Grid. Idea here is to figure out if current result set in Result grid contains primary key and then find out what table(s) reference it and then give menu item to allow to select rows from child table.

Features for next version

2008-06-19T23:28:00.002-04:00

Version 3.23 is realized and all known issues seem to be fixed. Now we will take some time and work on improving existing features. One of the main feature which will be looked at is Intellisense. Currently it's fast and useful but limited in certain situations. One of the issue is Intellisense implemented as one peace of code which handles it for all different databases and it became pretty messy. Sybase and Microsoft SQL Server are very different from Oracle and DB2 so the plan is to separate code for different servers which should make it simplier and easier to extend.
One of the distinctive features of SqlDbx is how fast it compare to other tools. There's always ways to improve it. Will try couple of things in this area. Also it's time to improve help file.

Things to do next

2008-04-30T22:34:00.003-04:00

Ok, release 3.20 is out and now is the time to think what to do next. There's a lot of interest in feature which puts results of every query into a new result tab. I personally think it's not such a great idea. It's easy to end up with a lot of tabs and then it's too confusing. What I am thinking about doing is to add query results to a new tab when Shift key is pressed at the time of query execution. Will implement it this way and see how it works. The other thing I want to improve Intellisense. SQL is not easy language to build Intellisense for. It's not very structured but there's always ways to improve. Another feature which I probably will put into one of the next releases is option to put connection into a read only mode. Basically it will detect any INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE statements and will not execute them.
Couple days ago decided to do some performance testing between SqlDbx and some other similiar products. Was pleasantly surprised that SqlDbx is faster then any of them and sometimes by large margin and I still thing there's room for improvement.

Upcoming release of SqlDbx 3.19

2008-03-24T22:53:00.004-04:00

Major feature of this upcoming release is the Unicode support. There will be two versions of SqlDbx available: Ansi and Unicode. Two versions will be basically the same with some minor differences.
We decided to have two different versions because it seems easier to maintain and update the code and not everybody needs Unicode to begin with. Unicode version handles everything in Unicode. Some peaces of SqlDbx were pretty easy to convert to Unicode and some were not. Editor, UI controls and Results Grid required some minor changes. Most problems were related to the way different Database Servers implement Unicode support in different versions. Sql Server and DB2 were the easiest to convert. They have API similar to ODBC which is Unicode "aware". The most
time consuming was Sybase support. Documentation is sparse and not very clear in some areas.
Seems that everything is working pretty well now.

SqlDbx Version 3.16 is out

2008-02-03T01:46:00.000-05:00

Adding column (block) mode support to Script Editor was not as simple as I anticipated, but it's done and I think it stacks up pretty good against other editors which support block mode.
Last couple of weeks talked to some of our users and it's interesting how some of the features and options they ask for are already implemented, but they never found out about them. One of these features is an ability to save and restore workspace state between restarts. This can be turned on in Options on General Tab, just check "Enable Session State". Also you can save / load it at any time. Look under File->Save Session State and File->Load Session State. Another example is scripting of objects from Object View pane. By default object definition goes to active Script window. This can be changed in Options->Scripting.
Next release will be mostly small fixes and performance improvements in some areas like generating thousands of inserts, export to Excel.

Version 3.15 released

2008-01-13T16:31:00.000-05:00

What I realized recently after talking to some of our customers that they do not know about some of the useful features we have implemented. So I decided to start describing some of them.
One of the feature which is pretty useful is ability to generate SELECT, INSERT, DELETE, UPDATE SQL statements directly from Results Grid. This functionality is available if you right click in Results Grid and select "Generate" menu item. You also can select multiple areas in Result Grid by holding Ctrl key.
Recently released version 3.15 has two new nice features. Both of them are on Script Editor pop up menu. In Script Editor click on database object name then right click and select menu item "Script Object to new Window". Object definition should open in new window, or you can select "Sync Object View" and if object found in Object view it will be made visible.
Now I started working on version 3.16. Main changes in 3.16 will be around Script Editor. Editor will support column selection / copy /paste mode.