Got this in my email today....
* SQL Prompt – FREE Intellisense add-in for SQL editors *
Red Gate Software has purchased SQL Prompt, an addictive add-in that provides Intellisense for Query Analyzer, Visual Studio 2005, VS 2003 and Management Studio. For the summer months, while SQL Prompt undergoes further development, feature tuning and relentless testing, the tool as it is now will be made available to everyone, for free. You can download it here:
http://www.red-gate.com/products/SQL_Prompt/index.htm.
"It would be wrong", explained Simon Galbraith, joint CEO of Red Gate, "to buy this cool add-in, that loads of people find extremely useful, and then to take it off the market while we tune it up. So we're making it available as it is now for free – i.e. in pretty much the state we bought it, plus a few bug fixes.
Meanwhile we’re putting our best engineers and testers onto it and setting them the task of transforming SQL Prompt into an even more impressive tool; one that can sit alongside our flagship products like SQL Compare. Their challenge is to come up with a version that will go up against an already very popular FREE tool. So it had better be good. I’ve no doubt they’ll come up with something awesome."
Lead Test Engineer on the project, Tilman Bregler, is typically upbeat about the challenge. "I'm pretty philosophical about it. It's going to ruin my summer. I know exactly what'll happen: we'll all be kept in our cages until the sun goes down in September. And if we haven't come up with a piece of software that people will pay money for, there'll be an offer we can't refuse: 'Take a 30% pay cut or empty your desk.' So it goes. Schopenhauer had it right when he said 'The software business sucks. Stick to making boots.'"
Tilman and his Red Gate colleagues would very much appreciate any feedback you have and suggestions for how to make this prize-winning SQL Editor add-in even better. Please submit all your ideas – no matter how wild – to the SQL Prompt forum:
http://www.red-gate.com/messageboard/viewforum.php?f=44