New Data Types: fully supported for loading, processing and scripting with the respective parent objects as a part of their DDL. User-defined types based on these types are also fully supported and loaded into the Schema Explorer

Date and Time – simplifying your work with date and time data, providing increased date range, fractional seconds precision, and time zone support:

• Date – defines a date within the accuracy of one day
• Time – defines a time of a day based on a 24-hour clock within the accuracy of 100 nanoseconds
• Datetimeoffset – defines a date that is combined with a time of a day that has time zone awareness and is based on a 24-hour clock within the accuracy of 100 nanoseconds
• Datetime2 – defines a date that is combined with a time of day that is based on 24-hour clock within the accuracy of 100 nanoseconds: can be considered as an extension of the existing datetime type

Hierarchy – allowing you to construct relationships among data elements within a table

• Hierarchyid – represents position in a hierarchy and sets the desired relationship between rows

Spatial – predefined CLR data types in SQL Server allowing you to represent information about the physical location and shape of geometric objects

• Geography – represents data in a round-earth coordinate system and stores ellipsoidal (round-earth) data, such as GPS latitude and longitude coordinates
• Geometry – represents data in a Euclidean (flat) coordinate system

Enhancements in indexes: : indexes with the new attributes are supported seamlessly to the ordinary indexes; they are displayed in the Schema Explorer and can be scripted without limitations as a part of DDL script of the parent objects or separately via the Schema Explorer

• Spatial Indexes – allowing you to index a spatial column of geography or geometry data types.
• Relational (filtered) Indexes – optimized non-clustered indexes specially developed to allow working with queries from a well-defined subset of data using a filter predicate

Enhancements in column properties: all new column properties are loaded from your database and can be fully scripted into the Query Editor as a part of the DDL of their parent objects

• Sparse columns - ordinary columns that have an optimized storage for null values
• XML COLUMN_SET - a column of this type is only materialized when selected, and will return you all the non-NULL sparse columns in a row as an XML BLOB
• FILESTREAM varbinary (max) – the new way of storing BLOB data allowing you to store the data in the file system. Unlike columns defined with FILESTREAM attribute the ordinary varbinary(max) columns store their data in the tables

Enhancements in procedure parameters and user-defined types: user-defined table types have limited support in the application

• User defined table type – allows you to define special types having table definition. Variables of such types can be used to store a result set for processing at a later time and passed as procedure parameters or used within the procedure bodies directly. You can create such types via the Query Editor or use procedure variables of table types in your queries if you know they exist in your database
  Note: Such user-defined types aren’t displayed in the Schema Explorer and thus could not be scripted directly
• Readonly parameters – indicates that the parameter cannot be updated or modified within the body of the procedure. Such parameters can be scripted into the Query Editor without limitations along with procedure DDL’s

Data compression in tables, indexed views, indexes and constraints: all new data compression attributes are loaded from your database and can be scripted as a part of DDL of the parent objects

• Data (Row and Page) Compression – allows you to compress whole tables, indexed views, indexes, primary key and unique constraints; can be configured for a whole table, indexed view and non-clustered index and for each partition in case of partitioned indexes or tables. ROW compression means storing fixed length data in variable length storage format and PAGE compression means minimizing the data redundancy

Change Tracking and Change Data capture: this features has limited support; for example, the CHANGE_TRACKING attribute doesn’t get scripted along with a parent table definition, but you can still manage both features directly in the Query Editor that allows you to enable or disable CHANGE_TRACKING on a table or use Change Data Capture procedures calls without lomitations

• Change Tracking – built-in server’s ability that allows you to answer the following questions: “What rows have changed for a user table?” and “Has a row changed?”
• Change Data capture – this new SQL Server feature provides historical change information for a user table by capturing both the fact that DML changes were made and the actual data that was changed. Changes are captured by using an asynchronous process that reads the transaction log and has a low impact on the system

Step into, step out of, step through debugging with support for conditional breakpoints, watches, call stacks, and more. List dependent objects called by the procedure and observe changes in the value of variables via watches, and set conditional breakpoints.

• Mid Execution Call Stack



• Defining Conditional Breakpoints

ApexSQL Edit 2008 has a powerful NEW Extended Properties feature that allows you to browse, view, and edit database object extended properties.

ApexSQL Edit 2008's unique SQL performance profiler allows you to track script execution performance line by line, identify slowest statements, and view variable/parameter history.

ApexSQL Edit 2008 offers support for object qualification and wildcard expansion. More refactors will be released in the coming months. Click here to see our Planned Roadmap of new refactors.

Example 1: Qualify objects

Example 2: Expand wildcards

ApexSQL Edit 2008's totally rewritten formatting engine has it's own graphical interface, eliminating the need to edit XML files. Customizable options include:

• Customizable commas and spaces in relation to a single or multiple statements
• Text indention – absolute or keyword relative
• Text wrapping
• Automatic casing for constructs and types
• Application of BEGIN/END scope for IF statements and procedures
• Operator placement, parenthesis and spaces configuration
• Schema definition formatting using multiple lines, indenting and parenthesis
• Data statement configurability – column placement options, parenthesis configurability
• JOIN/FROM statement aligning

ApexSQL Edit 2008 allows for seamless integration with Team Foundation Server, Subversion and SourceGear Vault using ApexSQL Source Control add-on, exposing new features like working with Labels and History as well as reducing problems associated with the SCC interface (otherwise commonly used to access these systems without ApexSQL Source Control add-on).

The graphical dependency viewer has been re-introduced into ApexSQL Edit allowing users to browse object relationships visually in a variety of presentation styles.

• Dependency viewer – Database view



• Dependency viewer – Individual object view

ApexSQL Edit supports any SCC-compliant source code control system like Visual Source Safe, Team Foundation Server, Subversion, SourceGear Vault, Perforce and more.

ApexSQL Edit's Schema Explorer allows users to browse servers, databases, individual objects and their properties launching powerful contextual menues and source control options.

One of the most powerful features of ApexSQL Edit is the Object Explorer which allows you to group, sort and manage objects in a powerful tabular format. Batch operations like check in, check out, get latest empower users to work more seamlessly with source control. Additional columns allow browsing object meta data, dependencies, scripts and more.

ApexSQL Edit's Intelliprompt allows you to focus on writing SQL statements for your database objects without focusing on the details of exact column, table and variable names. Not only can Intelliprompt significantly speed up your SQL writing time, but annoying typos and mistakes are also significantly reduced.

Collapsible regions in code on command eliminators like BEGIN and END to provide a Visual Studio like presentation of your SQL Code.

When writing code, the tooltip feature displays object descriptions or syntax hints.

ApexSQL Edit allows users to view and edit data. Filter, sort, group, edit all in a single powerful interface.

ApexSQL Edit includes a powerful visual query editor that allows you to build complex queries.

With ApexSQL Edit’s auto-replacement feature you can set it to ensure commonly misspelled words are corrected automatically.

Code Snippets allow the user to predefine blocks of SQL/Code with the ability to define replacements throughout the snippet where users can customize the final inserted text. Snippets offer a variety of options including automatically setting cursor location in completed replacment text.

The Object Search feature searches for text matches in SQL objects names.

Object Search allows you to search for any objects within a specific database with support for wildcards and loose matching.

The Text Search feature searches for data text matches in tables and views. By checking boxes besides table and view names you are able to filter in only specific objects. Also you are able to choose additional filter options like search text type columns, search date columns, search UniqueIdentifier columns, search Views, to use partial matching.

ApexSQL Edit allows multiple SQL Developers to share mappings and otherwise work seamlessly in the same integrated source control environment, with ApexSQL Edit's powerful centralized mapping feature.

ApexSQL Edit allows full granular customization of menu actions (i.e. Double click) on an object specific basis. For example, double clicking a Table might open it for editing but double clicking a Procure might script it to the editor. Entirely new menus can be custom designed and added to the existing context menu for that object.