User profile for EdCarden

Redgate celebrates its 25th birthday with community support initiatives - What About The Employees

I just want to say great job to Red-gate for their initiatives announced in an email I got today about it's 25th anniversary. The email says that Red-gate "..reached $100 million in annual recurrin...

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ATurner said: Hi all, SQL History has replaced tab history, thus it will not be coming back. However, the team is actively reading your feedback on what can be done to improve SQL History. In order to help us prioritize our development efforts, we would like to ask you to provide us with some concrete examples on how SQL history is not meeting your needs. This will help us understand your pain points better and address them more effectively. ATurner - Did you not run this by anyone in legal or public relations first? Your very first sentence has an undertone of sarcasm and frustration. Yes you follow it up with your reading feedback and working on the thing but when you are engaging with your customers about a mess you caused I wouldn't tell them "X has replaced Y and X isn't coming back". You instead could have written something like this: "SQL History has replaced Tab History in such a way that we can't bring Tab History back. Hindsight is always 20/20 and if we could have done it differently we would have but we can't. What we are doing is working on trying to fix SQL history and with your feedback we hope that it will one day be to you what Tab History was if not more." Do you see the difference? Your message comes across like a frustrated parent disciplining their child; not a very good way to engage with your customers. Were you the one that made the call to replace Tab History with SQL History and so now you're frustrated that so many aren't happy with that decision? Or were you the one who created SQL History and so now your angry that so many are calling it garbage? I've enaged with RG employe Steve Jones many times and some where more complaints than compliments yet Steve was always professional. / comments

ATurner said: Hi all,SQL History has replaced tab history, thus it will not be coming back. However, the team is actively reading your feedback on what can be done to improve SQL History. In ...

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ATurner said: Hi all, SQL History has replaced tab history, thus it will not be coming back. However, the team is actively reading your feedback on what can be done to improve SQL History. In order to help us prioritize our development efforts, we would like to ask you to provide us with some concrete examples on how SQL history is not meeting your needs. This will help us understand your pain points better and address them more effectively. I'll take that bet! Speed, design, ease of use ,beta build and just plain old lack of consideration. At launch SQL History was dog arse slow and more buggy than a pile of dog poop in the middle of summer. I will grant you that a year later and who knows how many updates later it's finally operating at an acceptable speed. One major issue aside from speed was the drastic change in the UI between the 2. Tab History was a fast lightweight tool that at times one might think the thing was able to anticipate what you wanted. Even you guys saw SQL History as enough of being different from Tab History that you changed the name. I don't remember where this was I want to say someone from Red-Gate mentioned that SQL History was a new from the ground up product and not just Tab History with a whole lot of changes and additions. That means it was a different product yet instead of treating it as such you had it replace another product verses being an addition. I believe somewhere someone from RedGate said something along the lines of SQL History using resources (i.e.e files, locations, history, ect) and that's why the 2 couldn't co-exist and because SQL History made some changes to those resources there was no way to let customers pick between the 2. If true that was a design decision that could have been done differently. It looks like from the start the plan was to replace Tab History vs treating SQL HIstory as another product and that too was a choice you guys made not us. SQL History should have been a separate product that instead of taking over resources Tab History used it could have used it's own set and coped from Tab Historys resources what ever is needed so the 2 are separated. Had you done that so your customers could have a choice between the adoption of SQL History would have been a slow and lengthy process because after the messy state SQL History was in at release few would have been willing to give it a chance again anytime soon. Tab History was an easy to use lightweight add-on that was great at what it did. Sure it didn't do as much as SQL History but maybe many or even a majority of your customers were happy with it like that; they weren't looking to to "Office Up" the thing. That's where a simple and effective software tool becomes bloated as the vendor keeps trying to find more things for it to do to justify customers continuing to upgrade. When Tab History was introduced I didn't need to get a How To manual or guide to figure it out. One of software developments biggest issues is that those working on the product know it inside and out so you can't see it the way your customer would, someone who doesn't know the thing like you do so what appears to be common knowledge to you isn't to the customer. Microsoft probably has the biggest screw-up in recent history on this when they pushed out that Ribbon UX in their products but at least for a few years they did make it optional. I'll tell you what I told their feedback dept about the ribbon, when the unwanted change you push out top your customers causes an entire industry of products to come into existence that are solely for the purpose of undoing the change you made and these tools are wanted enough that you can sell them, that should be a huge Red Flag to you, not something you close your eyes and say "nothing to see here, nothing to see here". For you guys it was just a free add-on and your customer base isn't large enough to spawn something like what the RIbbon did but you still followed the same pattern except you didn't give your customers time to pick between the 2. There is also the simple lack of consideration. While Tab history was a free add-on it was a free add-on to a pay to use product so not really "free". It was also very clear to more than just a few of your paying customers that this thing wasn't really ready for release. You pushed out a beta product replacing something people clearly loved, Maybe I missed the memo but where did this demand for a replacement to Tab History come from in the first place? There may have been included in something somewhere in advance that "We are going to take away Tab History when we push this monster out" but it's very obvious many missed said memo and were completely caught off guard. What does it tell you when a portion of your customer base actively chooses to downgrade simply to avoid something you pushed out to them w/o any choice on their part? This may no longer be the case but I remember Tab History being an "optional" add-on meaning the amazing SQL Prompt could be used without being required to use Tab History. I believe the same was true with several other add-ons so that raises the question why was this thing which was clearly not ready for release, not optional? The entire thing was a poorly handled mess that Redgate effectively was able to move past ONLY because of time and fixes so that SQL HIstory is no longer a beta product and most importantly b/c you did this with an add-on and not the core product. Had this stunt been pulled with SQL prompt itself you would have seen a very different result, likely loosing customers to a competitor. SQL prompt may be the best but it's not the only SQL tool out there. IDM's UltraEdit & UltraStudio products are always looking for that next thing they can add to their tools. They've looked at making it possible for their product to connect to data sources and if they had done that when you guys pulled this stunt you can bet I would have said goodbye and I doubt I'd have been the only one. You guys really handled this very poorly, catching your customers off guard and then acting like as if it wasn't a big deal and with (what looked like) little care about it. Sure there was the expected apology that people expect companies have their lawyers draw up when they make a mess of things but today no one see's those as being anything genuine. You're very lucky that some gifted person/people over there were able to fix the kludgy thing and quickly. SQL history is still not as fast or easy to use as Tab History was and I wish I could give specific examples but I like many people usually stumble across those when we're under the gun ourselves and don't have time to pause what we are doing to write up a memo for you guys. In the end you got lucky. Your existing reputation and quality of products (of everything but SQL History) is likely why this wasn't worse for you in terms of customer retention but if you do this kind of thing again I wouldn't count on your customers, your paying customers, being as patient/tolerant. / comments

ATurner said: Hi all,SQL History has replaced tab history, thus it will not be coming back. However, the team is actively reading your feedback on what can be done to improve SQL History. In ...

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tslagter said: SQL Dependency Tracker will do what you want. It can but it's over kill for what I needed. Clearly there's SQL Code for it b/c SQL Server Mgt Studio does it. I've just been shocked that no one that can find has posted what that is. I've found several ways to get a single of direct dependency but nothing that iterates thru an entre set of dependencies like you get when you right -click in SSMS and select View Dependency. SSMS also let's you see the dependency from bottom up to top down / comments

tslagter said: SQL Dependency Tracker will do what you want. It can but it's over kill for what I needed. Clearly there's SQL Code for it b/c SQL Server Mgt Studio does it. I've just been s...

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FYI - I ended up answering my own question. I had previously tried to use SSMS's View Dependencies feature but I had selected the wrong option; Objects that Depend on SP_Name. When I switched to Objects on which SP_Name depends it gave me exactly what I was looking for. I'm kind of shocked I didn't see this listed 9in my google search) as a way to get this. Now the question is, who does SSMS's View Dependencies feature do it, what T-SQL does it use; and I am assuming that's how it's doing this. NOTE: The View Dependencies does not require any permissions that are above the dbo; no server level permissions. That said it would still be a nice feature to add to SQL Prompt with some addiotnal features/perks like being able to export to Word or even visio, gliffy or other popular diagraming apps. / comments

FYI - I ended up answering my own question. I had previously tried to use SSMS's View Dependencies feature but I had selected the wrong option; Objects that Depend on SP_Name. When I switched to Ob...

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DanC said: Hi @EdCarden I don't believe we have this feature in the tool, if you'd like to make a feature request please post on the forum here: https://redgate.uservoice.com/forums/94413-sql-prompt Dan - Is this even possible within T-SQL? I've been scouring the net trying to find a way to do this and the best I could find is some code that would show you the first SP call within a SP and that's it. I was fully expecting, when I started searching, that there'd be some built-in way/method to do this. / comments

DanC said: Hi @EdCarden I don't believe we have this feature in the tool, if you'd like to make a feature request please post on the forum here: https://redgate.uservoice.com/forums/94413-sql...

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Does SQL Prompt Have a Way to show Stored Procedure hierarchies

What exactly is a Stored procedure hierarchy?This is where a SP contains within it a cell (vie EXECUTE) to 1 or more other SP's and within those SP's they may call one or more other SP's.

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I think they just made a huge mistake. I've been a customer of Red-gate for over a decade and this is the first time I've seen something like this happen. Granted I don't use every product so I can't speak to anything other than SQL Prompt but with that I can say this unbelievable goof is a first of it's kind. If something like this happens again then I'm going to start questioning what's happened to management at Red-Gate but I have a strong feeling that after this fiasco they are going to lock things down on their end and make sure this kind of mistake doesn't happen again. As mentioned in another post by another user, the release notes did not mention anything about Tab History being replaced. This gives me pause to ponder if the problem isn't soo much that SQL history is terrible but that it was supposed to released as a new feature and not one that overwrote an existing one; Tab History. If so that would make sense. Management was expecting SQL history to be rolled out as an addition where as either the team behind SQL History or the team that puts together the installer thought it was supposed to replace Tab History. What I am certain about is that this happened because of miscommunication somewhere. After 10+ years using Red-Gate products I have a hard time believing this was done intentionally. If this is what happened I would hope at some point they would tell us this. Not only would it make sense as to how this happened but it would help their image because users would then know that this wasn't intentional. / comments

I think they just made a huge mistake. I've been a customer of Red-gate for over a decade and this is the first time I've seen something like this happen. Granted I don't use every product so I can...

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DustinM said: Hi Everyone, Thank you for all of your feedback, Our dev teams are aware of the current version of SQL History being a pain point and are continuing to improve it with each release. I also wanted to leave a hopefully helpful comment here for those using the current version of SQL Prompt and SQL History. If you add a wildcard to the end of the search it should order by date where as it is currently set up to look for the closes match. This will not work with punctuation, however. [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] I hope this information helps. Best, Dustin [image] [image] Dustin - any tips are always a help but in this case I believe most are going to do like me and just downgrade, roll back to the last build that is pre-SQL History. There's just not enough in the latest update (at least for me) to justify tolerating SQL HISTORY over TAB HOSTORY. Additionally nothing you do while SQL HISTORY is installed will be in TAB HISTORY so it's best to roll back to a prior version as quickly as possible. / comments

DustinM said: Hi Everyone, Thank you for all of your feedback, Our dev teams are aware of the current version of SQL History being a pain point and are continuing to improve it with each rele...

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WARNING - Avoid Upgrading SQL Prompt Until Red-Gate Brings Back Tab History

In an effort to provide its loyal customers with a better and improved version of TAB HISTORY Red-Gate rolled out a new feature named SQL HISTORY that replaces TAB HISTORY. Unfortunately SQL HISTOR...

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