Thursday, June 15, 2006

Intellisense in VSTS for Data Professionals

I heard it brought up several times that there is no intellisense in VSTS for Data Professionals. One explanation from the product team was the complexity of writing SQL statements, and how you would efficiently gather and present the intellisense information.

This didn't seem right to me. I mean, only weeks ago, Red Gate released SQL Prompt, which gives you intellisense capabilities in Management Studio (and, I believe in Query Analyzer too). So, the problem's obviously been solved, so why can't MS just include in in VSTS?

I saw Matt Nunn in the TLC area, so I sat down to ask him. Matt was on the SQL team for the longest time, and then went to the VSTS team either late last year or early this year (which I now know was for this product).

Matt's official marketing-speak response was that the capability exists, and even was in Management Studio at one time. But, it can't be released to the public because it needs far more QA/regression testing first. This is actually a satisfactory answer to me, because saying that "we have a quirky version in the lab" is more logical than "we're still thinking about how to do it".

I would have to think that the regression testing for VSTS is several multitudes harder than what Red Gate had to do, so I'll just wait for further word.