Increase Your Productivity With Query Analyzer

Did you know that you can have CTRL + Number key combinations/shortcuts in Query Analyzer? You can set it up so that CTRL + 5 executes sp_who2 for example. I thought everyone already knew this but apparently not; I showed this to 3 coworkers yesterday and they didn't know about it. So how do you set this up? It is pretty easy, select Tools -->Customize from the toolbar. In the Customize tab you will see 3 shortcuts already:

ALT + F1 sp_help

CTRL + 1 sp_who

CTRL + 2 sp_lock



To add your own queries/procedures type or paste the query or stored procedure that you want to execute into one of the empty ones (see picture below)



If you have 4 Query Analyzers applications open it will be available in all 4 of them. I usually have 4 Query Analyzer applications open, one for staging, one for development and one each for one of the production boxes. so if i have to quickly check that a table is the same on all 4 machines I just hit CTRL + 6 in all 4 Query Analyzer applications and I am done.

I created a Word document that looks like this
3 - errorlog
4 - product table
5 - country table
6 - vendor codes
7 - sp_who2
etc etc etc

The font-size is 32, I printed this out and put it next to my monitor so that I can quickly see which key combination I have to hit. Once you set this up you will see how much time it will save you.

[wrong]I did not see this functionality in SQL Server 2005 Management Studio so maybe it is something we should request from Microsoft to be added in SP3?[/wrong]

It is there in SS 2005. Click Tools -> Customize -> "Commands" tab -> "Keyboard" button (Lower left corner of screen).On the options window, click the Keyboard option (under Environment). See pictures below: