Labels: SQL Server, SQL Server - Backups, SQL Server - SSMS

When deploying database code, I'm running each SQL script on several servers, and having to click the "change connection" button dozens of times in SSMS is very frustrating. I submitted this as a bug to Microsoft, and Bill Ramos offered the following method for creating a keyboard shortcut:

1. Open a Query Editor window connected to your favorite server.
2. Right click on the Change Connection toolbar button on the Query Toolbar button and select the Customize command at the bottom of the menu.
3. Right click on Change Connection button again and then change the command name "C&hange Connection..." to "Chan&ge Connection...". This will change the hot key from Alt-H (which would conflict with the Help menu hot key) to Alt-G.
4. Finally, in the Right Click menu for the Change Connection button, you need to select the command option to display both "Image and Text". This exposes the Alt-G command to the Query Editor.
5. You can now close the Customize dialog and use Alt-G as your hot key!
   

I love this shortcut. I use it dozens of times daily. It's still too much overhead for deploying, though, so I either use Query Analyzer (open a window, drag all the files into it, and they all open with a connection to that same server without prompting) or an application I wrote to accept a deploy list, get the files from our source control provider, and put them all into one script with appropriate USE [database] statements.

Labels: SQL Server, SQL Server - SSMS