Writing Your Own SQL Server Management Studio 2005 Add-in

JCooney.NET - The Black Art of Writing a SQL Server Management Studio 2005 Add-In

"It all started with me writing this kind of T-SQL query over and over:
Select * from sysobjects where xtype = ‘U’ and name like ‘%foo%’
For the longest time I’ve wanted to write a SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) add-in that would allow me to search for schema entities like tables and stored procedures by name non-modally to help me find things in “big” schemas. SSMS already has a schema entity search/filter feature built-in. You launch it by clicking the button with the funnel-shaped icon as shown in the screen-shot below. I wasn’t too enamoured with this since it launches a modal dialog, it only lets you search across one database, and only for one kind of thing at a time (table, stored procedure, view etc). ...

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So Why Does This Qualify as a Black Art?
Writing add-ins for SSMS is something of a black art. It’s not supported, the APIs aren’t documented or designed for extensibility, and it’s really only possible by virtue of the fact that SSMS is built on top of the Visual Studio codebase. The only decent coverage I was able to find on the web was this article on ASP Alliance which doesn’t provide any code.  I’m hoping by writing this post and providing a working add-in I can start a revolution in SQL Server Management Studio add-in writing.

Why You Should Write a Cool Add-In
So I can use it. So other developers can use it. Writing stuff against supported, published, documented APIs is....well...quite frankly it’s passé. With intellisense and google and codeproject and the MSDN and blogs even infrastructure people can write code these days. So where’s the fun? It’s here my friends – all the pain of the Visual Studio object model combined with the added bonus of being unsupported and undocumented!

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This is a cool post walking you through creating your own SSMS 2005 Add-in in VS2005...