SQL Formatter Plugin SQLinForm has now Visual NAvigator for complex SQL
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Hello, just wanted to let you know that SQLinForm got a fresh new function
The new version of the SQLinForm plugin adds a Navigator, a docked side panel that shows the structure of your SQL. It’s meant for long scripts, stored procedures and deeply nested queries.
What it does
- Overview graph: every statement and sub-SQL as a box. Boxes are colored by type: SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE and MERGE. Edges are labeled with the clause the sub-SQL sits in (WHERE, SET, USING, UNION ALL, …), and CTEs are labeled with their names (WITH region_sales).
- Structure tree: each statement broken down into clauses and items, with quick facts like 3 columns · 2 tables · 1 condition · 1 sub-SQL.
- Click to jump: click a box or a row and the line is selected in the editor.
- Levels 1–4 / All: collapse or expand the whole tree in one click.
- Search with next/previous hit, highlighted in both the tree and the graph.
- Cursors, CTEs (with the main query shown separately), UNION, MERGE … WHEN and INSERT … SELECT are handled.
- Light and dark theme. The UI is available in 12 languages.
I appreciate any suggestion or error feedback :-)
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I don’t use SQL (nor thus your plugin), but from what little I know about it, the screenshot of your new Navigator feature looks like an impressive amount of work.
Out of curiosity, do other SQL editors/interfaces give you that amount of help? Or has your plugin just become the premier SQL development tool? :-)
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@PeterJones ,
It appears that it’s a diagrammer, which should help visually see what’s going on, especially when the SQL statement gets complicated.dBASE has a different tool, that allows us to click on tables, set sorts…etc that creates a SQL statement, without knowing SQL itself as long as you know what operations you want done on the data, the tool, SQL Builder will write the SQL, albeit it’s a subset for dBASE called LocalSQL.
There’s similar capability in MySQL Workbench, that let’s one diagrammatically visualize and create their entire database’s structures, and visually link and set operations.
SQLinForm’s new feature, is a nice tool for a text editor to have, if one wants to diagnose a complex SQL statement that may not be doing what someone wants it to do, breaking down visually the different steps and dependencies that are being used by the statement at different points. I’d say it looks like it does a good job of documenting the SQL code as well. I guess the one thing I’d ask, is does it stay only with Standard SQL or does it see and interpret variants? (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, and other popular dialects.)
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@PeterJones, thanks! It was indeed a fair amount of work. To your question: database IDEs like DataGrip, DBeaver, SSMS or MySQL Workbench do offer visual help, but mostly in a different direction. They show execution plans (how the database runs a query) or let you build queries visually, and they usually need a live database connection.
My motivation came from my own work in data warehouse projects. It’s not unusual there to inherit SQL statements spanning several pages, undocumented and unformatted. My first step was always to format them, which already helps a lot to understand what’s going on. The Navigator is the next step: a visual map of the structure, especially for those “monster SQL statements”, right inside the editor, with no database connection needed. “Premier SQL development tool” is a bit much :-) but for reading and understanding large SQL in Notepad++ it should help a lot.
@Lycan-Thrope, good description, that’s exactly the idea: understanding and documenting an existing statement rather than generating one. And no, it isn’t limited to Standard SQL. The Navigator visualizes the result of the formatter, so it works with every dialect the formatter supports (30+, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, Snowflake and more). For now it shows SQL statements and DDL. If you run into a statement it doesn’t break down correctly, I’d be glad to get a sample.
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