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Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

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SQL syntax highlighting and formatting in SQL Editor

The SQL Editor window could have a better presentation of the SQL code; two issues observed

  • First, that it's simply plain text without even a fixed-width font, much less syntax highlighting
  • Second, if you type in some manually formatted SQL code (e.g. with line feeds and indentation), then click on the "Visual Query Builder" button, then click back to the "SQL Editor" button, all the formatting is lost as it is converted to one run-on line of code, which is very difficult to read.

I understand that going between the Visual Query Builder and the SQL Editor is bound to have some issues; nonetheless the "idea" is to allow a user friendly display in the SQL Editor window:

My "implementation ideas" are based on a couple minutes with google, so hopefully this is a very feasible request; my user base is very likely to spend more time in the SQL editor than not, so this would be a valuable UX addition.  Thanks!

 

36 Comments
Mark2
7 - Meteor

Put in some <CR> to break-up the SQL into a readable form.

dynamicsnail
7 - Meteor

I was surprised at how poor the SQL editor was when I first opened Alteryx. Not having to constantly move back and forth from an editor would definitely help.

If motivation is needed to get this back to consideration, I could point out that Dataverse has both fixed-width fonts and syntax highlighting...

Atabarezz
13 - Pulsar

+1

I agree... Somehow Alteryx devops don't wanna build capabilities on SQL but it's a legacy that no one would be able to kill for another 20 years...

 

So better increase the #qualityoflife for Alteryx users...

ADerbak
11 - Bolide

Is it possible to enhance just the text editor of the Input Tool, especially when connecting to databases? 

 

My team uses a variety of databases - some familiar, some not-so-familiar - and before we could rely on IntelliSense in MSSQL to help guide us for what we are looking for. Now, if we want to input a query (AKA Copy/paste from an old MSSQL query), we have to make a lot of adjustments to get it to work. With IntelliSense, we can tell which part of the query is off and what needs to adjust. However, with Alteryx's text editor, it feels like a bit like a guessing game. Sometimes it is such a bother, that we scrap the query altogether and try to rebuild from the visual table layout, which can be quite tedious if you have multiple schemas.

 

The other issue with the text editor is that if you do have a best practice to comment out your SQL query and make the code readable, switching between SQL Editor to Visual Query Builder and then back to SQL Editor causes your SQL query to be "blocked", making it unreadable, and also deletes out comments! As we want to share our code with each other, this makes it quite bothersome for those that are proficient in SQL. I have posted a simple example below where I typed in the code, switched to VQB and then back to SQL Editor to get the 2nd picture's results. This is minor for this example, but can be quite annoying when you have many, many lines of codes and comments!

Formatted Query.JPG

 

Unformatted Query.JPG

 

 

 

Thank you for reading my idea!

-AD

SeanAdams
17 - Castor
17 - Castor
Fully agree with your suggestion - and several others have requested the same things in the past too (i.e. it's a common need). Past a certain point - using SQL is both necessary and desirable so it would be useful if the product embraced this more deeply. https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/SQL-syntax-highlighting-and-formatting-in-SQ... https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/More-User-Friendly-SQL-Query-Builder/idi-p/7... https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Ideas/Print-out-the-SQL-in-a-more-readable-form-Ha...
gonzalezantony
5 - Atom

Thanks for sharing this information! You know, I also was searching for the right way for formatting SQL code and have tried various solutions. I think SQL Complete is a pretty good tool for advanced code formatting have a look at it

simonaubert_bd
13 - Pulsar

There are at least five ideas on the same theme, all with a lot of stars.

 

@ARich: You have the opportunity to satisfy a lot of users with a very light improvement existing in every DB tools, such as dbeaver, squirrel, dbviz, sqltools, flamerobin, razosql... and the other dataprep products already get it.

Atabarezz
13 - Pulsar

Check out https://teamsql.io/ too...

jpoz
Alteryx
Alteryx
Status changed to: Coming Soon

This needs to happen. Stay tuned...