Red Gate's SQL Productivity Tools working together at Burnt Orange Designs

'Working as a consultant, time is literally money - my clients' money to be precise - so maximising productivity is always high on the agenda for my team and me. That's why Red Gate's SQL Server tools are an essential part of our toolkit for delivering services.

I first came across Red Gate's SQL Compare over 10 years ago, whilst managing development and production databases for Dial-a-Phone. Using SQL Compare, I was quickly able to generate robust release scripts and review the changes being made in production. This cut swathes of time from our production releases and reduced administration at the same time.

Well, Red Gate's tools have come on a long way since then. SQL Compare is vital to us in synchronising development, test, and production environments. Not only does it save enormous amounts of time in tracking changes and generating release scripts, it lets me see the changes being made in development at a glance, and lets me monitor the coding standards being used by developers in real-time.

My other favourite Red Gate tool is SQL Prompt. In dealing with large, complex database systems, it is simply not possible to remember the names of all the tables, columns, stored procedures or relationships. SQL Prompt provides IntelliSense-style prompting of objects, automatic JOIN condition completion, and automatic scripting for common areas such as SELECT and INSERT statements. It saves huge amounts of time, boosts productivity, enforces common layout and coding standards, and means I can focus fully on the task in hand, while letting the syntax and code take care of themselves. Short cut keys for favourite statements are invaluable, and the fully customizable nature of the tool means you can easily change it to suit your own specific coding preferences and best practices.

It is possible to work without Red Gate's SQL Server productivity tools; it simply takes twice as long and requires twice the effort. The tools also have a relatively low cost, so a single production rollout could pay for them in itself - in my experience ROI would be a matter of days. I would whole-heartedly recommend them to anyone whose role involves development or administration on MS SQL Server platforms.

Jerry Pett, Director, Burnt Orange Designs

-----

Jerry has over 25 years working in Software Development with organisations such as Dial-a-Phone, TATA, Phones 4U, 3 and BT Mobile. Currently, Jerry is Director of Burnt Orange Designs, a leading design and development consultancy delivering bespoke solutions.