While playing with SQL Server 2011 “Denali”, I’ve accidentally found out that it has slightly enhanced intellisense in SSMS. There is one thing which I really like much – partial name matching. Prior to SSMS 2011 you had to enter object’s first letters in order to be completed by intellisense. For example to find “JobCandidate” table you had to enter “Jo … “. This was quite annoying especially if you had many objects with same prefix – this turn intellisense almost unusable. In SQL Server 2011 you can enter any part of object’s name and intellisense will still find it.

See simple demonstration here.

I am personally switched off standard intellisense in SSMS 2008 long time ago and using Red Gate’s SQL Prompt instead because it is just better. This is much more than enhanced intellisense but probably to align SQL Prompt intellisense to SSMS 2008 intellisense behavior, partial name matching is not implemented in SQL Prompt . I was googling and found out that partial name matching is in top 3 feature request for SQL Prompt. I voted

To complete intellisense story – I was googling for full list of SSMS 2011 intellisense enhancements and found this article.