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Part I: Laying the Foundations
A common misconception among new SQL Server DBAs is that Management Studio is SQL
Server. It’s not. Management Studio is a front-end client tool used to manage SQL Server
and develop databases. Typically, Management Studio is run on a workstation and connects
to the actual server. Management Studio sends T-SQL commands to SQL Server, or uses SQL
Management Objects (SMOs), just like any other client application. It also inspects SQL
Server and presents the data and confi guration for viewing.It’s interesting to watch the commands sent by Management Studio to SQL Server. Although Management
Studio can generate a script for nearly every action, you can view the actual traffi c between SQL Server
and its clients using SQL Profi ler, which is discussed in Chapter 38, “Using Profi ler and SQL Trace.”What’s New with Management Studio in SQL 2012
SQL Server 2012’s Management Studio is a continuing evolution of SQL Server 2008’s Management
Studio. Since SQL Server 2005, the SQL Server Management Studio has been using the Visual Studio
shell for 2005 and 2008, respectively. SQL Server 2012’s SSMS uses the Visual Studio 2010 bringing
with it a new look, feel, and a few nice feature enhancements. There are quite a few enhancements to
SQL Server Management Studio including:■ (^) Transact-SQL code snippets, templates you can use as starting points for building batches
and scripts.
■ (^) Transact-SQL Surround with snippets, templates you can use to surround T-SQL statements
in BEGIN, IF, or WHILE blocks.
■ (^) Transact-SQL debugger support for instances running SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2
(SP2) or later.
■ (^) The Watch window and Quick Watch now support Transact-SQL expressions.
■ (^) Point-in-time restore visual timeline that allows you to quickly and easily identify a feasible
point in time as a target time for a database restore.
■ (^) New Page Restore interface allows you to check database pages for corruption and to restore
selected corrupt pages from a database backup and subsequent log backups.
■ (^) New nodes or node organization (for AlwaysOn/High Availability and SSIS DB) in Object
Explorer navigation.
Organizing the Interface
Management Studio includes a wide variety of functionality organized into thirteen tools,
which you can open from the View menu, from the standard toolbar, or from the associated
hotkey:■ (^) Object Explorer (F8): Used for administering and developing SQL Server data-
base objects. The Object Explorer Details page presents a list of objects under the
selected node.
■ (^) Registered Servers (Ctrl+Alt+G): Used to manage the connections to multiple SQL
Server engines ranging from SQL Server 2005 all the way up to SQL Server 2012.
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