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An excellent and "complete" integration for SSMS
Updated June 29, 2021

An excellent and "complete" integration for SSMS

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with dbForge SQL Complete

I started using dbForge SQL Complete a few years ago, and when I moved to my current job, I brought it with me. Members of my development team have noticed me using it and have tried it out for themselves, then gone on to purchase licenses. It's made working within SQL Server Management Studio much easier, and when I recently installed the 2018 preview of SSMS, I found myself missing dbForge SQL Complete quite a lot until I installed it there, too.
  • Intellisense - it's not just what columns are on what tables, but foreign key navigation as well, which makes writing JOIN statements a breeze.
  • Formatting - I think most developers doing any kind of database querying like to see cleanly formatted statements, and dbForge SQL Complete formats well out of the box but also allows you to customize the formatting options to a really detailed degree.
  • Tab colors - this sounds like a small thing, but when I'm opening multiple database server connections, being able to tell at a glance which open tabs are for which connection is great. You can manage this to a degree in SSMS without dbForge SQL Complete, but it's a nice touch.
  • Every now and then the intellisense isn't current with database changes, but that's easy to fix and happens with SSMS vanilla anyway.
  • The intellisense/auto-complete feature for writing queries quickly
  • The dbForge search tool for seeing where a column is used (you can use this for other objects/types but the column search is what is used most often for us)
  • Formatting queries quickly to make them easier to read and maintain
  • Spending less time trying to figure out how tables are related thanks to the navigational help in dbForge SQL Complete, which means fixing issues takes less time.
Redgate has some great tools for database work, but ultimately what fit best for my needs and use case scenarios was dbForge SQL Complete. I felt like I had to have multiple Redgate tools installed to achieve the same thing as having dbForge SQL Complete installed. They're not directly analog tools, so that makes sense, but for what I do, the better tool was SQL Complete.

Azure SQL Database allows for a lot of flexibility through plugins/extensions, but for out-of-the-box functionality you can't beat SQL Complete (I didn't intend to rhyme but I'm leaving it).

Do you think dbForge SQL Tools delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with dbForge SQL Tools's feature set?

Yes

Did dbForge SQL Tools live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of dbForge SQL Tools go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy dbForge SQL Tools again?

Yes

If you're not in a database management app every day, dbForge SQL Complete might be overkill for you. I know some of my team members are just as happy with Azure Data Studio and a few extensions. I walk through a lot of production support issues, so being able to clearly tell which environment I'm working in, at a glance (QA, dev, staging, prod backup, etc), is a huge help for me. I also pick through generated SQL from an ORM, and dbForge SQL Complete makes it easy to comb through that. SQL Complete is also excellent for finding where (or if) a certain column or table or view is referenced within the database(s) on a given server. This is immensely helpful when I'm working in an area I'm not very familiar with.