SQL 2008 Templates...a little more info

Last week in Kansas City while presenting the New Features of SQL 2008 for Developers session of MSDN Unleashed we had some questions of whether this is a new feature in this release. I mentioned that it isn't and has been part of the product since at least SQL 2005, and someone asked whether the keyboard shortcut for filling out the parameters of the template (CTRL+SHIFT+M) still worked. I didn't know about this feature so I tried it in front of a live audience and found it doesn't work out of the box.

My hat goes off to an attendee who took the time to figure out why not and he sent me the answer. The bottom line is that the keyboard mappings are different in SQL 2008. You can fix this by going into the Tools|Options|Keyboard settings and set the keyboard mapping. I found that once I opened the settings window that the keyboard shortcut worked whether in Standard or SQL 2000 layout.  It's weird that I had to open the settings to get the shortcuts to work, but it did.

For what it's worth, hopefully you'll be able to use the Templates feature when you're working with SQL Code.