I’ve figured out a couple of tidbits today that I wanted to share. First and foremost, I’ve discovered a (new to me) option in SSMS to convert tabs to spaces. I had previously seen the “Untabify Selected Lines” option (under Edit –> Advanced), but this only seemed to remove the tabs at the beginning of the line; it would not remove in-line tabs. I’ve now found another option that will remove the tabs throughout the selected code.
Here’s how you can do it:
Disclaimer: I’m using SSMS 2008 and have not confirmed this in other versions of SSMS.
From your toolbar, right-click in the empty gray space, or click on the drop-down arrow. Navigate to Customize:
Click on the Commands tab, then navigate down to Edit –> Convert Tabs to Spaces.
Note: if you’re one of those weirdos who like tabs instead of spaces, you can convert in the other (wrong) direction, too. 
Once you have found the option you want, click on it and drag it to your toolbar.
Cool, huh?
Another little thing I ran into today was a mismatch between nullable and non-nullable columns in related tables. I started to perform a manual audit before I said, “There has to be a faster way.” And you know what? There was. Here’s the little script I used:
SELECT c1.name AS [columnName] , c1.is_nullable AS [FactInternetSales_isNullable] , c2.is_nullable AS [FactResellerSales_isNullable] /* replace AdventureWorksDW2008R2 with your database */ FROM AdventureWorksDW2008R2.sys.columns AS c1 JOIN AdventureWorksDW2008R2.sys.columns AS c2 ON c1.name = c2.name WHERE c1.object_id = object_id('dbo.FactInternetSales') -- replace with your table AND c2.object_id = object_id('dbo.FactResellerSales') -- replace with your table AND c1.is_nullable <> c2.is_nullable; -- find discrepancies |
This returned the following results:
columnName FactInternetSales_isNullable FactResellerSales_isNullable ---------------------- ---------------------------- ---------------------------- RevisionNumber 0 1 OrderQuantity 0 1 UnitPrice 0 1 ExtendedAmount 0 1 UnitPriceDiscountPct 0 1 DiscountAmount 0 1 ProductStandardCost 0 1 TotalProductCost 0 1 SalesAmount 0 1 TaxAmt 0 1 Freight 0 1 (11 row(s) affected) |
This script isn’t as polished as my usual, but it’s really just a quick-and-dirty way of checking for mismatches in NULL properties.
Okay, that’s all I have for now, my SQL friends. Oh, and if you know any other cool little tidbits, please feel free to share with me. 
