First Look at SQL Server 2012 Management Studio

Last week, Microsoft released SQL Server 2012. With this release comes an update to SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). Here is a quick glance of some of the new features…

New Font and New Color Scheme

If you take a look at the new SQL Server 2012 Management Studio, you will immediately notice the new color scheme  and that it looks just like Visual Studio 2010! That’s because it’s not built on the Visual Studio 2010 Shell. We will also notice that the default font is now ‘Consolas’.

Multi Monitor Support

SQL Server Management Studio now supports multiple monitors, just like Visual Studio 2010. You can drag each window to another monitor. This also means that each monitor can appear outside of the SSMS shell.

Code Snippets

Now there are lots of code snippets are available and you can that code snippets via right Click Query window-> Insert snippets like following.

Once you click Insert snippets it will open lots of built in snippets and create syntax for you directly.

You can also manage the Code Snippets from the Tools –> Code Snippets Manager… menu

Zoom Functionality

Now you can zoom the query editor window. There is a dropdown given in left bottom corner of the window and you can zoom the query editor windows as you need like following.

Improved IntelliSense

SQL Server 2008 added IntelliSense support. In SQL Server 2012, this only gets better and faster. It seems much more responsive, similar to what we see in Visual Studio 2010 IntelliSense.

A New Activity Monitor Window

Additional features in SQL Server Management Studio:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms174219(v=sql.110).aspx