Some things that we want to tell you about our add-in

First of all, why use SSMSBoost plug-in? There are several third-party products on the market, where the whole SSMS development environment is completely re-implemented. As professional developers we have tried a couple of such products, but unfortunately:

• Due to complexity of support of different versions of MS SQL Server, there is no product that runs stable - you can never rely that they even return you full result sets and print all messages (happens when using code with mixed PRINT,SELECT and RAISERROR statements)
• Third-party tools build additional ADODB connections to your databases and you actually have no control of their actions - what they do and when they do it. "When" is important, if you experience blocks and deadlocks.

We decided that it is better to Improve existing functionality of SQL Server Management Studio via plugging-in and adding missing features instead or re-inventing the bicycle.
Though SSMS does not officially support add-ins, we have managed to find the ways to integrate our add-in into the SSMS environment using NATIVE interfaces. This approach has many advantages:

• Using SSMS with SSMSBoost add-in allows you to use native development environment made by Microsoft, bringing you maximum possible compatibility with all supported versions of SQL Servers
• When saving preferred connections SSMSBoost re-uses built-in mechanism of SSMS for saving connection information, so, even if you use SQL server native security, passwords will be saved in encrypted form and only SSMS knows how to decrypt them. (Encryption is bound to you windows login, so if someone steals your config file, passwords will remain secure.)
• SSMSBoost is flexible and is evolving permanently, so if you miss some feature in SSMS, that Microsoft has "forgot" to implement - do not hesitate to write us an e-mail or post your comment in our forum. We will do our best to implement it.
• If you want to write you own add-in you can check our article with sample C# project. But before you spend weeks or months of your time, think if it is easier to submit us a feature request :)