Editing SQL Scripts

The SQL Commander contains an SQL editor, used to edit SQL scripts.

The editor area looks like this:

Above the editor is a toolbar with buttons related both to execution of scripts and to editing. The editing related buttons are covered below.

The left margin shows the line numbers.

Below the editor, you see a Status Bar. The first field shows the current caret position in the format:

<line>:<column> [<position from top>]

The last figure, within square brackets, is the caret position from the top. This can be useful when you get an error message executing a script that contains this information rather than a line/column location.

The next field in the Status Bar shows INS if characters you type will be inserted at the caret position or OVR if they will overwrite the current text at the caret position. You can toggle this mode using the Toggle Typing Mode keyboard shortcut, by default bound to the Insert key.

The next field shown in the screenshot is only visible when working with macros, described in the Recording and Playing Edit Macros section.

Next comes the Auto Commit Status field, showing whether Auto Commit is enabled.

The last two fields show information about the file loaded in the editor, if any. First the character encoding and then the filename. If you just type into the editor without loading a file, the filename "Untitled" is shown instead. An asterisk after the filename indicates that there are unsaved edits.

The SQL Editor is like any editor you're used to when it comes to typing, scrolling etc. But it also offers additional features to help you specifically with editing SQL scripts. These are described in the following sections.

Syntax Color Coding

An SQL script consists of keywords, operators, object identifiers, quoted text, etc. It may also contain comments. To make it easier to see at a glance what is what, the SQL Editor displays words using different font styles depending on their classification. For instance, keywords are displayed with a bold blue font, while quoted text is displayed with a regular type red font.

You can change how to display the different kinds of words, as well as the editor selection background color, the current line highlight color and the editor background color, in the Tools->Tool Properties dialog, in the Appearance/Fonts category.

The editor uses the Tool Properties settings from the SQL Commander/Comments category under the General tab to detect comments.

Charsets and Fonts

You can also change the SQL Editor font family, which is useful and necessary in order to display characters for languages like Chinese, Japanese, etc., in Tool Properties in the Appearance/Fonts category to set the font for the SQL Editor.

Loading and Saving Scripts

The SQL editor supports loading statements from a file and saving the content of the editor to a file. Use the standard file operations, Open, Save and Save As in the File main menu or the main toolbar to accomplish this. Loading a file loads it into a new SQL Commander tab or activates the tab that already holds it.

The name of the loaded file is listed in the status bar of the editor, with the full file path shown in the window title. The editor tracks any modifications and indicates changes with an asterisk (*) after the filename. When you close the SQL Commander tab or exit DbVisualizer, you are asked what to do if there are any pending edits that need to be saved.

The File->Open Recent submenu lists the recently loaded files. How many recent files to keep track of can be specified in the Tool Properties dialog, in the SQL Commander category under then General tab.

You can also use the Quick File Open feature to open recent files as well as Bookmarks and History entries. By default, it is bound to the Ctrl+Alt+O key combination, and is also available via a main toolbar button as well as in the main File->Quick File Open menu.

Drag and Drop a File

You can also select a file in the platform's file browser and drop it somewhere in the DbVisualizer window. If you drop it in an editor, the file content is inserted at the caret position in the editor. If you instead drop it in the toolbar area, the file is opened in a new SQL Commander tab.

Drag and Drop Database Objects

If you want to include an object shown in the database objects tree, you can select the node and drop it in the editor where you want it inserted. The Script Object dialog is shown where you can select exactly what you want to insert in the editor.

First of all, you can select to insert an SQL statement based on the dropped object, e.g. a SELECT statement or a CREATE statement. You can also choose to just insert the object name. The choices available depends on the type of object you drop.

In the Options area, you can opt to format the SQL before it is inserted and use qualifiers and quoted identifiers, and even change which statement delimiter to use.

The Output Destination is set to the SQL Commander tab you dropped the object on by default, but you can change your mind and pick another destination. If you stick with an SQL Commander as the destination, you can tell where in the editor to insert the text.

You can also open this dialog from the Databases tab, from the object's right-click menu.

This behavior can be reversed in Tool Properties, in the SQL Commander category, so that dropping without pressing a key inserts the names and pressing the key launches the dialog."

Loading and Saving Bookmarks and Monitors

Bookmarks and Monitors are also files, but with special meaning. See the Managing Frequently Used SQL for how to create and edit them in the SQL Editor.

Navigating Between History Entries

When you execute a script, DbVisualizer saves it as a history entry, see the Re-Executing SQL Statements section for details. You can use the Previous and Next buttons in the editor toolbar to navigate between (load) these entries.

Confirming Overwriting Unsaved Changes

By default, you have to confirm overwriting unsaved changes in an editor, e.g. when navigating between history entries, and when closing an SQL Commander tab with unsaved edits. You can disable these confirmation popups in the Tool Properties dialog, under the SQL Commander category under the General tab.

SQL Formatting

Auto Completion

Auto completion is a convenient feature used to assist you when editing SQL statements and DbVisualizer commands. By default, you activate auto completion with the key binding Ctrl-SPACE, but you can also configure it to activate as you type (in the Tool Properties dialog, in the SQL Editor/Auto Completion category under the General tab).

With the caret in any place in a statement where you can type something other than a table name or a column name, and at least one character just before the caret, activating auto completion displays a list of keywords that starts with the letters you have typed so far. As you continue to type, the list narrows.

The list of keywords is database specific, selected based on the database type for the connection currently selected in the Database Connection list above the editor.

With the caret placed where a table or view name may be typed in a supported SQL statement type, the auto completion list shows a list of tables and views from the currently selected database connection, assuming you are actually connected to the database. The following figure shows the completion pop up with table names.

A completion pop-up showing column names is shown when the caret is placed where a column name may be typed.

DbVisualizer provides auto completion for table and columns names for the following DML commands:

• SELECT
• INSERT
• UPDATE
• DELETE

Auto completion for DbVisualizer commands is very similar. Activating it after a partial command name lists all matching commands. If you activate it after a complete command name, you get a list of all valid parameters for the command. After a parameter name, you can select from a list of valid values.

For the @export set command, the parameter list is adapted for the specified output format after you have entered the Format parameter setting, for instance only showing parameters that are valid for the CSV format.

To display the completion pop-up, use the key binding Ctrl-SPACE (by default). You select an entry in the pop-up menu with a mouse double-click, the ENTER key, or the TAB key. To cancel the pop-up, press the ESC key.

It is possible to fine-tune how auto completion works in the connection properties.

• Enable or disable the use of identifier qualifiers (i.e. qualifying table names with the schema name) in the [Database Type]/Qualifiers category,
• Enable or disable the use of delimited identifiers (e.g. quotes around a table name) in the [Database Type]/Delimited Identifiers category.

Sorting, when to show the popup, etc. can be configured in the Tool Properties dialog, in the SQL Editor/Auto Completion category under the General tab.

Recording and Playing Edit Macros

If you repeatedly need to run a sequence of edit operation, you can record them as a macro and play it as many times as needed during an editing session. The editor status bar indicates when a recording is in progress and when a macro is available to play.

As an example, suppose you have some plain text that you need to convert into INSERT statements:

12345 123456
89012 890123
45678 456789

Place the caret at the beginning of the first line and start the macro recording, using the right-click menu or the corresponding key binding, and then type text and use key bindings (or menu items) to perform the following operations:

1. Type insert into mytable values('
2. Insertion Point to End of Word
3. Type ',
4. Insertion Point to Next Word
5. Type '
6. Insertion Point to End of Word
7. Type ');
8. Insertion Point Down
9. Insertion Point to Beginning of Line

Then stop the recording. You now have a macro for converting a single line to an INSERT statement. To convert the remaining lines, just use Play Macro for each line. The result will look like this:

insert into mytable values('12345', '123456');
insert into mytable values('89012', '890123');
insert into mytable values('45678', '456789');

Folding Selected Text

If you work with a large script, it can sometimes be helpful to hide parts of it. You can do so using the Code Folding feature.

Select the text you want to hide and then choose Toggle Fold Selection in the right-click menu. The selected text is then replaced (visually only) with a folding marker.

Here's an unfolded script:

And here is the same script with the CASE expression folded:

You can fold more than one part of a script using the same procedure.

To unfold just one part, select the folding marker (be careful to select all of it) and then choose Toggle Fold Selection from the menu again. To unfold all folded parts, use Expand All Foldings.

Selecting a Rectangular Area

In some cases, it is handy to be able to select a rectangular area in the middle of a script. Say, for instance, that you need to copy just the first part of a few lines and paste it at the beginning of some other lines.

To do this in the SQL editor, click the mouse where you want to start the selection and then press the Alt key (by default) while you extend the selection by dragging the mouse. If you prefer to use the Ctrl key as the modifier, you can change the default in Tool Properties in the SQL Commander category under the General tab.

Tab Key Treatment

Pressing the TAB key in the editor inserts four space characters by default. If you instead want a TAB character to be inserted, or want to insert another number of space characters, you can specify this in the Tool Properties dialog, in the SQL Commander category under the General tab.

Key Bindings

The editor shortcuts, or key bindings, can be redefined in the Tool Properties dialog, in the Key Bindings category under the General tab. Expand the Editor Commands node to manage all editor actions and the Main Menu/Edit node to manage the key bindings for the edit operations in the right-click editor menu and the main window Edit menu.