I don’t know how long I’ve been waiting for this, but someone has finally built an Intellisense tool for SQL Server Management Studio & Query Analyzer. If you’ve been using Visual Studio.Net 2003 or 2005, you’ll know how useful Intellisense is in other programming languages (it’s like auto-complete in Word).
I don’t know why it’s not a standard feature of SQL Server 2005’s Managment Studio, but Atadore have filled the void of an Intellisense tool with PromptSQL.
If you work with multiple databases, or lots of objects and don’t want to be referring to your diagrams all the time, PromptSQL really helps.
Not only can it complete table, view and column names, but it works with stored procedures and parameters. Use a Ctrl-Space keystroke to activate a drop down list of objects or columns relative to your current t-sql command.
Table / View Selection
Hitting Ctrl-Space after JOIN will display related tables. Doing the same action after the ON will display the possible joins for your tables using foreign keys.
Join Related Table
On Clause Foreign Key Selection
If you are interested in trying it out, you can download PromptSQL here.