At work, I am both a DBA and a technical lead for a couple of tracks. It is not uncommon to have situations where I have been working on a query for sometime and am pulled into a completely different task as part of a query resolution activity. When I return back to work on my query, it is sometimes hard to remember whether a particular result set is that of the most recent changes or that of a previous change iteration.

The SQL Server Management Studio provides a quick configuration option which allows me to include the query that produced a particular result as part of the informational messages generated during the query execution. This option is aptly worded “Include the query in the result set”.

To access this option, simply navigate out to Tools –> Options –> Query Results –> Results to Grid (Or Results to Text, if one is generating output as Text).

Here’s the option in action:

After setting this option, whenever I execute a query, the query is printed in the Messages tab. As can be seen in the image below, if the Query Editor has a query different than that available in the Messages Tab, it is a direct indication that the results in the Results tab is not generated by the query in the editor.

Summary

The ability to co-relate a result set with the query that produced the result set is a great productivity booster because it reduces the time it takes me to “get back into the zone”.

I trust this tip was helpful for you. Do share with me other productivity tips that you may have.

Until we meet next time,

Be courteous. Drive responsibly.