RedGate SQL Refactor

I was fortunate enough to receive a copy of RedGate's SQL Toolbelt, which includes SQL Prompt, SQL Compare, SQL Data Compare, SQL Refactor, SQL Packager, SQL Data Generator, SQL Doc, SQL Backup, SQL Response, SQL Multi Script, and the SQL Comparison SDK. I have used SQL Prompt (intellisense for SQL), SQL Compare, and SQL Data Compare in the past and have always liked RedGate's products.

Today I had the opportunity to use SQL Refactor to rework several tables in a a database. My co-worker had asked that a table, in a database in development, could be renamed. As you probably know, there is no thing as a simple table rename, especially when it is one of the core tables in the design. In the past I would have to go through every relationship, trigger, view and stored procedure and make the changes, but today, with SQL Refactor, I was able to do it much faster using the Smart Rename function. SQL Refactor plugs into SSMS, so if you right-click on an object you get a Smart Rename option. Once selected you are prompted to provide the new name, and Refactor finds references to the table in foreign keys, triggers, views, and stored procedures, and generates a script for all necessary changes. It does the same for column renames as well. Even with this tool I spent my entire afternoon making changes. Mainly because this one table had references to several other tables, thus every place there was table_id, I needed to make the change to that table as well as Refactor does not rename columns in other tables. Still I would have been looking at probably a full day plus of work without the tool.

The only change I would, and will, suggest to RedGate is to allow you to rename multiple columns in a table at one time so one script is generated instead of having to rename each column separately for the refactoring to be done.

The next tool I will be trying is SQL Response. I'll probably let you know how it goes.