Vadivel's blog

Most of the Developers / DBAs I have worked with are maintaining their utility scripts in file system. When ever a script is needed they browse through that folder via SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) and open it.  I have personally found this method little tedious and not so productive way of doing things. I always prefer these two methods instead: Creating an Utility database in the server and having all the required scripts in it The other way is to organize our utility script with the help of SSMS Template explorer Maintaining Utility DB method is self-explanatory and so in this post we would concentrate on the way to make use of Template Explorer for organizing our scripts. Let's get started. To open template explorer  from SSMS  follow either of the methods: Option 1: Click View >> Template Explorer Option 2: Press Control + ALT + T We would see how to utilize template explorer to organize our utility scripts and how it helps us in...

One of my office colleague recently asked me why we are not able to generate ALTER Table script from SSMS. If we right click on the table and choose "Script Table As"  ALTER To option would be disabled or Greyed out. Is it a bug? No it isn't a bug. ALTER To is there to be used for generating modified script of Stored Procedure, Functions, Views, Triggers etc., and NOT for Tables. For generating ALTER Table script there is an work around. Right click on the table, choose "Modify" and enter into the design mode. Make what ever changes you want to make and WITHOUT saving it right click anywhere on the top half of the window (above Column properties) and choose "Generate Change Script". Please be advised that SQL Server would drop actually create a new table with modifications, move the data from the old table into it and then drop the old table. Sounds simple but assume you have a very large table for which you want to do this! Then it woul...