Question

I installed Developer edition of SQL Server 2008 R2 and find out intellisense is not working or show as other developer talking about.

Is there anything else I need to do to get intellisense working in SQL Server Management Studio?

What I do to get it to work?

Answer 1

First and foremost you must be working with a SQL Server 2008+ instance, for the server to be able to give you the metadata for intellisense.

It is a fine art making intellisense work for you.

The first thing you can to do make it recognize the database context is to put

USE databasename;

at the top of your query window. This gives it a better grasp of where you are working.

The next thing you need to get used to is to write your queries in a different order, fill in the FROM clause first, so the skeleton should be something like

SELECT ^
FROM tblname

or

UPDATE tblname
SET ^

At the position marked ^, intellisense will have a good idea of what db/table context you are working in.

UPDATE a
SET a.^
FROM tblname a, tbl2 b

Without fully specifying the join condition, just listing the tables as above allows intellisense to work with a.

There are many other tricks, such as if you renamed objects, you’re best off to start a new query window or disconnect from the server completely and reconnect, or even restarts SSM Studio.

Other reading:

• http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/datacenter/using-intellisense-in-sql-server-2008/446
• http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2009/03/31/sql-server-2008-intellisense-does-not-work-enable-intellisense/