SoftTree SQL Assistant v12.1 (maintenance release) - What's New


Short introduction

We believe the new personal workspace database feature introduced in 12.1 delivers great productivity boost. This feature supports super simple methods for saving the data you work with, and quickly retrieving it later without needing to rerun long running queries again; and then comparing historical results saved over a period of time. It also enables advanced data analysis and data enrichment, across data sources data aggregations, and so on. As a teaser, imagine clicking a data grid populated with results of a long running query, selecting "Save to Workspace", and then using SQL queries or other built-in tools to join saved grid results with data from another database, another data grid, or with data from an external CSV file.
New database systems and interfaces

Support for Apache Cassandra and DataStax Enterprise databases, with full CQL/SQL intellisense, full graphical schema management. Most SQL Assistant tools and features available for relational SQL databases can be used with Cassandra too, including direct data migration to and from other databases.
Support for Snowflake databases and warehouses, most SQL Assistant tools and features available for relational databases can be used with Snowflake, including advanced SQL Intellisense, schema compare, data export and import, and so on...
Enhanced support for SQLite with new built-in native driver connections enabling use of regular expressions in SQL queries, table and index space usage stats, JSON data handling, attaching external data files as tables, supported by Visual Database Documenter, Schema Compare, and other SQL Assistant tools now enabled for SQLite.

New major features and significant enhancements

Personal workspace database, simply put this is the new productivity enhancement that can change how you work with your databases. With a couple of clicks you can now save data grids and results of queries to your personal workspace and then return to them later, query them like other tables, join/enrich with other data, and of course update their data too! We believe this new feature redefines the meaning of productive database development and analytical use. Easily much and mix data from different database, catalog and save query results and more, its your personal database that you can share with others too.
Many enhancements in the SQL History. The entire feature has been completely redesigned and now supports storing history for long time, not limited to the current session time; It now supports fuzzy searches and code filtering, enables reusing historical SQL statements across databases, provides more efficient UI with important details shown at the top of the queries and not important details compressed or hidden by default.
New and enhanced functions for working with CSV files. You can use the new Data File Query utility to query and update data in CSV files as if they were tables in a relational database using full power of SQL language, regular expressions, transactions, and so on...
The new Data File Transformation utility further extends advanced support for CSV files, enabling you to add, remove, modify, and rearrange columns, remove duplicate data, pivot columns and rows, filter using regular expressions, and make other transformational file changes, all that without needing a desktop spreadsheet program.
Many small and not so small SQL Intellisense enhancements including but not limited to advanced intellisense for index specific DDL operations, triggers, smarter Intellisense for schema context, suggestions for arguments for built-in database functions, improved JOINs suggestions display differentiating referenced and referencing tables, and more.
Improvements in Database Messages pane including new searching and filtering capabilities, integration with SQL History, and so on...
Significant changes in how SQL Assistant's Reports handle their queries. You can now use SQL scripts with multiple statements to retrieve the report data.
Now supporting data exports to Parquet files.

Database management enhancements

All supported databases - the Update Statistics utility is now run in the background, you can continue working while it's updating table statistics in the database.
PostgreSQL - Graphical dashboard and session monitors for PostgreSQL now show progress of work of long operations (PostgreSQL 11.x and later).
PostgreSQL - enhanced handling of partitioned tables, including but not limited to better SQL Intellisense, scripting DDL for the common table and all its partitions in one atomic operation.
PostgreSQL - Top Functions graphical monitor.
SQLite - Table and index space usage statistics.
Oracle - Graphical partition and subpartition manager.

Miscellaneous

Updated add-ons for Visual Studio 17 and previous versions which now enable using SQL Assistant immediately after the installation and don't require installing additional database specific extensions, like Visual Studio Database Tools or T-SQL Query Editor.
SQL Assistant's SQL Editor now preserves BOM in Unicode script files saved with BOM, as well as it can add BOM if such file encoding is selected.
SQL Assistant can better support automatic Windows updates and can automatically recover its environment after updates and restarts.
A number of other minor improvements.