RedGate SQL Search Has What????

This week I am back at it with my SQLCoOp friends in sharing the goodness of a utility that has helped us all ~ RedGate’s SQL Search plug in for SSMS. This utility has always been helpful in perusing through the schema of any SQL architecture in the search for the gems that we as data professional look for.

The Quest

The outlook was grim and bleak recently one day at the shop. I could recall a portion of a job name and step name for that matter but couldn’t find it for the life of me. The server I was on at the time had a vast amount of jobs on it which I will save for another day.

I will admit frustration started to set in and I started to just open up a query analyzer and start writing some code then it dawned on me…..I had just downloaded a new version of RedGate’s SQL Search Utility. I recalled from the version that they extended the search into SQL jobs; at that moment it was like a light bulb went off in the old noggin.

Now, if we are honest, we all like to work smarter not harder and save time along the way; with that said I decided just to crack this utility open and give it a shot.

Let’s Go

First thing I needed to do was fire up SQL Search inside SSMS. To do this and for the sake of explaining I will be showing this use case on my local, because well, we shouldn’t be showing the world our prod servers now should we! As you can see below firing up SQL Search is simple an easy. While on my local instance if I click on the SQL Search highlighted icon it will bring me to my SQL Search screen where I can then expound on my search criteria.

I had to define my search; I knew a phrase in my job but didn’t know the whole name….so with that said typing in what I knew and not selecting the exact match I knew would pull back the full job name; or so I thought.

Now this is where it gets really good and makes the SQL Professor very happy. RedGate decided to go on and throw job search functionality into their updated utility. If you click on the All Object Type drop down you will see a Server Object called jobs. Simply go ahead and check that. Now for my use case I went on ahead and checked them all.

So, what have we done up to this point is type in our phrase, ensure the jobs server object is check then it’s giddy up and go time. After letting the search occur in all databases I find the results I’m looking for:

My job name pulled back along with the actual step detail. Whoa wait, I had no clue I’d get the detail with it as well. Hats off RedGate this is something that every Data Professional can utilize and is a tool that saves time. It took me less than a minute to do a quick search and pull the information that I required.

Like What You See?

Listen, this just is one avenue in which RedGate has enhanced this product. I’m an everyday Data Professional that goes into work everyday and wants to work efficiently. Check this product out for yourself here

Some of the other enhancements made are:

Search in jobs
Select multiple object types and databases to search in
Improved indexing
Search with % wildcards
Search with Boolean operators

I tell you what; check out what my other colleagues have to say on the matter and how they have benefited from this utility:

If you want to read more about the newly released SQL Search, don’t forget to check out these blog posts:

Julie Koesmarno: SQL Server 2012 SSIS Project Versions
Jeffrey Verheul: SQL Search: The indispensable tool just got better
Mickey Stuewe: New and Improved SQL Search By Red Gate

On a SQL Collaboration Quest

Four SQL professionals gathered from the four corners of the world to share their SQL knowledge with each other and with their readers: Mickey Stuewe from California, USA, Chris Yates from Kentucky, USA, Julie Koesmarno from Canberra, Australia, and Jeffrey Verheul from Rotterdam, The Netherlands. They invite you to join them on their quest as they ask each other questions and seek out the answers in this collaborative blog series. Along the way, they will also include other SQL professionals to join in the collaboration.