Friday, September 9, 2016

SQL Sentry's Plan Explorer now free; The other SSMS tools I use

This is great:

SQL Sentrys' Plan Explorer(tm) is now free for all users.

I haven't been doing much plan analysis lately, as I have been working with largely legacy SQL Server 2008 R2 (and earlier) code. I did spend a lot of time with the free version of Plan Explorer about a year and a half ago. I'm unaware of a better tool for it's specific task.

While I am on the subject, the other things that round out my SSMS extensions are:


I've been experimenting with the ApexSQL Refactor and Search tools lately, but I haven't committed to them yet. I like the "reformat" that Apex provides. It is much more flexible that the "Poor Man's formatter", but, if I'm honest, I must say that I'm a little bewildered about how to configure it best for the way I like to see code. The Apex Search tool seems like a good replacement for Red-Gate's search, but I can't say that I've really found anything fatally wrong with Red-Gate's search.