TSQL Tip O’ the Week – 7/5/11 – Keyboard Shortcuts

This weeks tip:

Again….What’s the fastest land animal?  The Cheetah.

What’s the fastest way to test a query?  Don’t use your mouse and learn lots of keyboard shortcuts!

Some of my favorites in the query editor of SQL Server Management Studio are:

• All the text selection short cuts – standard in most Windows applications
• F5 – Execute the highlighted query
• CTRL + T – Results to Text
• CTRL + D – Results to Grid
• CTRL + R – Show or hide the results pane
• CTRL + Shift + R – Refresh the Intellisense cache
• CTRL+K then CTRL+C – Comment out the highlighted text
• CTRL+K then CTRL+U – Uncomment the highlighted text

Pick one or two of these for a day and work on them.  In no time you will be writing, testing and understanding more code than ever before – and if your mouse runs out of batteries – it’s just not a problem.

Another good way to embed these in your mind is to hang a cheat sheet in your office for a quick and easy reference.

Here are some related posts from the intraweb:

• From MSDN:  SQL Server Management Studio Keyboard Shortcuts
• From Pinal Dave:  SQL Server Management Studio Keyboard Shortcuts (SSMS Shortcuts) Download

Previous Tips O’ the Week

• TSQL Tip O’ the Week – 6/28/11 – SP_HELPTEXT
• TSQL Tip O’ the Week – 6/21/11 – Copy a Table Structure
• TSQL Tip O’ the Week – 6/14/11 – The Empty GUID
• TSQL Tip O’ the Week – 6/6/11 – Declare and Assign Variables