SQL Server Team-based Development - Red Gate Software

Chapter 7: Maintaining a Code Library
Text editors
Since T-SQL code is just text, a primitive way of maintaining a code library would be
simply to store all your snippets in a text file. The relevant snippet could be retrieved by
a search on its assigned name, and then copied and pasted into your SQL code. This is
a very labor-intensive and error-prone approach, so if you do go down this route, it's at
least worth investing in a decent text editor that will provide some mechanism for
managing the process.
Many modern text editors have built-in mechanisms for maintaining code snippets. For
example, EditPlus, one of the better-known shareware text editors, provides the cliptext
feature which allows us to create and store our own library of code snippets. It works like
the clipboard in Office, but has persistence to permanent storage. The library is stored as
a file, which means that it can be edited directly and, more importantly, can be checked
into source control, in order to maintain different versions of the file, and to share it with
other developers and DBAs within the organization.
Testing such a file is more challenging. As was suggested earlier, individual files can be
validated using individual, customized tests. A large single file, possibly containing a mix
of snippets as well as full templates, will require a fairly sophisticated testing mechanism.
It might help to add, to the comment header section for each piece of code, a description
of the test for that code, although this still makes automated testing difficult.
To create a new cliptext library, simply navigate to the cliptext window, on the left-hand
side of the EditPlus screen, right-click on the drop down and select New.
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