Goodbye enterprise manager!

Another great thing about SqlExpress is it comes with a great management tool that seems to have a much nicer UI than the evil incarnate that is SQL Server 2000′s Enterprise Manager which has all those horrible modal dialogs.

The new management tool is set up much like Visual Studio with a tabbed area containing each database element that you have open. This means you can have your stored procedure and your database table definition open at the same time and actually switch between the two without having to cut and paste your stored procedure into notepad because it’s not ready to save. UI genius!

One of the nicest features is it has a subfolder for each database object (like stored procedure or table) where it stores all of the system objects for that type. This is great because it means you don’t have to sort through a million stored procedures and tables to find the ones that you created.

This really is impressive, particularly considering the whole package is free (Bill Gates already owns all our souls).