How to install and use Azure Data Studio (ADS)?

In previous article we discussed what is Azure Data Studio (ADS), its uses, and when to use SSMS and when to use ADS. 

We can download the latest version of SSMS from below link:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/ssms/download-sql-server-management-studio-ssms?view=sql-server-ver15

In this article, we will see how to install ADS and few features of ADS.

How to Install ADS:

ADS installation is simple and straightforward. It is free to download the setup file from here. As of today below version of the file will be downloaded for the Windows machine.

Once the file is downloaded, double click on the exe and accept the license and proceed clicking 'Next' and finally, click on 'Install'.

After successful installation, go to Start and open ADS by clicking on the below icon.

Below is the welcome page of ADS at the time of writing this article.

If you see below pop-up to enable preview features or not, click on 'Yes'. So that we can view and make use of the preview features also.

There have been changes to the ADS layout recently and below is how the new ADS the welcome screen looks like:

Changing the look Of ADS:

We can change the color Theme as shown in below snippet: Here I am changing the color theme of my ADS to 'blue'

Viewing and Modifying Keyboard Shortcuts:

In the below snippet, we will see how to view the Keyboard Shortcuts of ADS and how we can modify the shortcuts. 

Below I’m modifying the shortcut for the “comment” line in code. The default shortcut for commenting out a line in code is “Ctrl+k Ctrl+c”, I am modifying it to “Ctrl+L Ctrl+C”

With the new update to ADS, we can view these ‘Color Theme’ and ‘Keyboard Shorcuts’ under ‘File’ as shown below:

Run the first query in ADS:

Now let’s run a simple query and will see how we can convert the output to a chart easily. On the welcome screen click on “New Query”

Or we can open ‘New Query’ like below:

This opens a new query window. First, we need to connect to a server for that click on “Connect”

Connecting to Instance:

Now enter “Connection Details”, here I want to query data from my Azure database so providing my Azure database connection string in “Server”, Authentication type “SQL Login” and its credentials. After providing all details click on “Connect”. The way to connect to an on-premise instance also similar.

Now the connection will establish to the Azure database. 

Let’s run a simple query on "SalesLT.ProductCategory" this is one of the tables in my “ADW” database.

“select * from SalesLT.ProductCategory”

Select ADW database from the drop-down list in “Change connection”, if it is not already selected.

Write the query and click on 'Run'. After clicking on “Run”, we can see the output of the query

On right-hand side, we can see different icons, each of them helps in saving the query result to CSV, Excel, JSON, XML.

Convert OutPut To Chart Format:

On the right side of the “Results” window, we can see the icon as pointed below,

Clicking on it will convert the query output to a chart.

There are different types of charts available and based on our requirement we can select each type of chart like Pie chart, table format, Doughnut, and so on.

Convert OutPut To 3D Visualization:

Now to visualize the data in 3D format, go to the home screen in ADS, and click on “Extensions”.

Or use shortcut “Ctrl+Shift+x” to open ‘Extensions’

We can see different extensions that are available to install. In ADS we get a lot number of “Extensions”, these extensions help in adding more features to ADS. For example, by default, we cannot see SQL Agent Jobs in ADS, so if we want to see SQL Agent jobs in ADS we need to install an extension named “SQL Server Agent”, after installing this extension we will be able to see SQL Agent jobs in ADS. Similarly there are many useful extensions that can be downloaded instantly. Another good thing about these extensions is we can either disable or uninstall these extensions if we no longer require those.

For converting the query outputs to 3D charts we need to install an extension named “SandDance”. To install it in the extension search box type “SandDance” and click on install.

It will get installed immediately, now open a new query window by pressing “Ctrl+N”

Run the same above query again and in the” Results” window we can see on the right side a new icon appears

Clicking on that icon will convert our output similar to below

Now Click on the highlighted cubicle icon 

and select the values for “X Axis:” as “Name”, “Z Axis:” as “ProductCategoryID” and “Color by:” as “Name”

Now the output should convert as below

Same way we can convert the output into different 3D charts available.

There are many other features of ADS like the creation of custom Insights, source control, server groups, and so on.

Let me know which feature you like in ADS in the comments section below.

Thanks VV!!

#SQL #SQLServer #SSMS #ADS #AzureDataStudio #SQLServerManagementStudio

What is Azure Data Studio? Should we use Azure Data Studio (ADS) or SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)?

Azure Data Studio:

Azure Data Studio (ADS), is a Microsoft tool developed for use across different platforms. ADS can be used in Linux, macOS, and Windows. The main purpose of ADS is to execute and edit queries. ADS has in-built features to perform several tasks very easily like output charts, visualizing outputs, exporting outputs to CSV, JSON, and so on, which are not so straight forward via SSMS. Through ADS we can connect to on-premise instances, Azure instances, and SQL 2019 Big-Data Clusters. ADS have several in-built InSight widgets and we can develop our own InSight Widgets as well. InSight Widgets are customizable charts and graphs which we can add to monitoring dashboards.

Do we need SSMS still? Will it be discontinued?

As a Database professional I have been using SSMS for many years for managing SQL instances. When I first heard of ADS my main question was “Is Microsoft planning to discontinue SSMS?”. After studying about ADS, as of today, my answer is “NO”. ADS does have all the advantages mentioned earlier but for performing administrative tasks, performance tuning, and configuring security features we can do only through SSMS. Also, we can use SSMS for managing both on-premise and Azure instances.

What to use: SSMS or ADS?

Both are useful for different reasons. For performing DBA activities we need to use SSMS only. For many administrative tasks like AlwaysOn, Export\Import, Database Engine Tuning Advisor, SQL mail, Replication, and many more tasks we need to use SSMS. ADS can be used to work mainly with queries, if we need to see query outputs in charts, export outputs to XML, JSON, CSV files, to work on SQL 2019 Big Data Cluster and for HDFS integration.

Sample Visualization that can be done in ADS:

We will see how a simple select query “select * from SalesLT.ProductCategory” run on sample AdventureWorksLT database can be visualized in ADS.

Below is the output of the query in SSMS: 

With a single click in ADS, the same output can be viewed in a Grid format as shown below. There are many different formats like Grids, Stacks, Scatter, and so on.

In the next article, we will discuss how to install and use ADS.

Let me know in the comments section below if you started using ADS and what is the best feature you like in it.

Thanks VV!!

#SQL #SQLServer #SSMS #ADS #AzureDataStudio #SQLServerManagementStudio