ApexSQL Complete 2013 R4 – Sneak peek – New features, improvements, and fixes

The new release of ApexSQL Complete 2013 R4 is announced for Q4 2013. ApexSQL Complete is a Free SQL auto-complete add-in for SSMS and Visual Studio. It auto-completes SQL statements, fills code fragments automatically, and much more

Here is a brief summary of some of the improvements and new features we have implemented

We introduced some new features and implemented 200 more hint-list templates for statements that didn’t have hint-list. We adapted sorting of the hint-list so that users have most probable hints on top of the list. Also, we made shortcuts customization possible so that any interference with VS or SSMS shortcuts can be avoided. We resolved some of our most important issues with performance and stability issues with the host environment e.g. SSMS

New hint-list templates

We added more than 200 hint-list templates and covered statements that had excess hints or didn’t have hint–list at all

Some of the covered statements:

Completing FOREIGN KEY REFERENCES statements

CREATE TABLE SQLComplete 
(
  SQLComplete_1 INT CONSTRAINT const FOREIGN KEY REFERENCES
 )

The user will be prompted with the hint-list of tables

After selecting a table and typing the “(” key

CREATE TABLE SQLComplete 
(
  SQLComplete_1 INT CONSTRAINT const FOREIGN KEY REFERENCES SQLCompleteTable1(
 )

Hint-list of available columns is prompted

Completing the WITH DEFAULT_SCHEMA statement for specifying the first schema that will be searched by the optimizer when resolving the names of objects for the created database user

CREATE USER Spock FOR LOGIN SpockLogin WITH DEFAULT_SCHEMA =

After pressing the Tab or Space key the hint-list of available schemas will be prompted

Completing the SET DEADLOCK_PRIORITY statements for specifying the importance for the current session to continue processing if it’s deadlocked with another session. Arguments for this SQL statement are LOW, NORMAL, and HIGH

Completing the certificates hint-list with available certificates

Transparent Hint-list

Another implemented feature is making the hint-list transparent. While typing a query, users can make hint-list transparent and read the SQL query behind, while holding the shortcut key

Performance improvements

An important improvement is an increased performance of processing typed characters and keyboard response, especially on larger scripts, of up to 50%

For example, in ApexSQL Complete 2013 R3 version number of typed characters in 5 seconds is ~60. The number of typed and processed characters in 5 seconds in ApexSQL Complete 2013 R4 is more than 100

Hint–list ordering improvements

Hint–list ordering is now based on statement, so that most probable hints are first in the list. For example, after typing the ALTER TRIGGER statement user will be prompted with a list of all available triggers first

And after typing the DECLARE @var statement user will be prompted with the hint-list of data types first

Shortcuts customization

We changed shortcuts for ApexSQL complete command so that the add-in does not interfere with Visual Studio and SQL Server Management Studio commands. Also, users can now customize shortcuts for ApexSQL Complete commands

Improved quality

In ApexSQL Complete 2013 R4 we’ve fixed 17 defects, from low severity to high