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Chapter 5: SQL Server Management and Development Tools
5
Filtering Object Explorer
Some databases are huge. To ease navigating these objects, Microsoft has included a fi l-
ter for portions of the tree that include user-defi ned objects, such as tables or views. The
Filter icon is in the toolbar at the top of the Object Explorer. The icon is enabled only when
the top node for a type of user-defi ned object is selected. For example, to fi lter the tables,
select the tree node, and then click the Filter icon, or right-click to open the tree’s context
menu, and select Filter ➪ Filter Settings.The Filter Settings dialog box enables you to fi lter the object by name, schema, owner, or
creation date. To remove the fi lter, use the same context menu, or open the Filter Settings
dialog box and choose Clear Filter. The fi lter accepts only single values for each parameter;
boolean operators are not permitted.Object Explorer Details
The Object Explorer Details page offers lots of useful information at a glance, such as
recovery model, containment type, compatibility level, collation, database owner, and
much, much more. You can open the Object Explorer Details page by going to View ➪ Object
Explorer Details or just press the F7 key.■ (^) Object Explorer Details has dozens of additional columns that may be added to the
grid. Right-click the grid headers to select additional columns.
■ (^) The columns can be rearranged and the rows sorted by any column.
■ Data can be selected (highlighted) and copied to the clipboard (Ctrl+C) in a tabbed
format with header columns — perfect for pasting into Excel and graphing.
■ The pane below the grid displays several properties depending on the size of the
pane.
The Object Explorer Details Search is one of the best kept secrets of SQL Server.
■ (^) If Object Explorer is at the server node level, the Object Explorer Details Search
searches every object in the server.
■ (^) If Object Explorer is at any node at or under the database node level, it searches the
current database.
■ (^) The Object Explorer Details page is rather object type generic and so is its context
menu. The best solution is to use the synchronize toolbar button or context menu
command to quickly jump to the object in Object Explorer.
■ If the Back button in Object Explorer Detail returns to search results, it automati-
cally reexecutes the search to be sure the list is as up-to-date as possible.
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