Toolset

A selection of development tools for database and data warehouse work.  I have tried to indicate where uac elevation is required to install them.

SQL Server

  • Poor SQL http://poorsql.com SQL formatting (online)
  • Poor Man’s T-SQL  formatter Visual Studio extension (CTRL K + C)  (no uac)
  • Poor Man’s T-SQL Formatter SSMS Extension (uac)
  • Sentry One Plan Explorer  https://www.sentryone.com/plan-explorer (uac)
  • Redgate SQL Prompt. 
  • Azure Data Studio. installed with SSMS.  I’m not yet a convert to this although it does allow direct switching between Azure SQL databases unlike SSMS.

Analysis Services

  • Dax Studio essential for analysing DAX queries https://www.sqlbi.com/tools/dax-studio/   (uac)
  • BISM Normalizer   Visual Studio extension.  Schema compare and merge for SSAS Tabular models. Rationalises the .bim file JSON hell. Home Page – BISM Normalizer (bism-normalizer.com) (no uac)
  • Tabular editor  will appear as a menu in PowerBI.  A better experience for editing tabular models than PowerBI or Visual Studio. (uac for installer but TabularEditor.exe can be run direct).

Visual Studio

Extensions and plugins

  • Azure development workload (selected during install, or by Add-remove programs–>Modify)
  • Analysis Services Projects (though not worth using for Tabular)
  • Azure Logic App Tools for Visual Studio
  • Azure Data Lake and Stream Analytics
  • BISM Normalizer (see above)
  • BI Developer Extensions for Visual Studio

Working with data

General