Sql Server Object Organisation

Question

OK I'm not sure if this is valid, however I have a bug bear with SQL Server, and that is that I cannot organise objects in to a group of objects.

Imagine I'm working on a new section of work in a large database and I perhaps have 15 objects that I will be regularly using. What I want to do is sort of "Favourite" them in to a folder so that I don't have to trawl through all objects in my databases.

I know I could organise objects by schema, however these objects aren't necessarily schema specific, they cross boundaries.

Has anyone come across a method for organising objects in to a favourites group? I know SQL Server Projects organise scripts, but I can't see that they can organises tables?

Thanks

Ed

Answer 1

You can't do that with the native tools (SQL Server Management Studio) but there's a workaround: create a new empty database with those 15 tables - just the schema, not the data. Then when you're writing T-SQL code, you can quickly drag and drop elements out of those tables into your code.

The downside is that changes made in the real database won't be reflected in your working database, but you can automate that with a script to pull out the objects you need and recreate them in your working database. You can run that as often as you like (like every X hours, or as a SQL Agent job that runs when your local dev server starts up) without losing data, since you won't be modifying the structure in your "favorites" database.