Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio irritation

One of the nice things about SQL Server 2005 tools is the integrated Application Development Environment that you get with the client tools. This Management Studio makes it so much nicer to work with script files, it groups them sensibly and allows you to tie connections to the script files automatically and all sorts of wonderful things.

However, it can become a nightmare to work with if you are in a hurry and you don't do things exactly the way that it wants you to do them.

This may occur because you are not given appropriate time to learn the environment properly, so you do things the best way you can rather than how the system expects you to do them.

Humans, generally, work in an object action style as opposed to action object, unless they have been programmed to do this with an environment that they have had to use for a long time.

With this style one expects all objects associated with a project to end up in the same directory, because all you are doing is file create each time, why should you care which menu option you used to create the file?

However, the environment is too 'clever' for the users good, if one creates a file and then moves it into the project then it moves the logical name in but doesn't change the physical location of the file. Then later, if you decide to clean the environment up in the operating system so that everything is nicely arranged you hit nightmare ally, because there is no relationship between the logical and physical names outside an INI, sorry I slipped, XML file with the extension ssmssqlproj in the project directory. And there is no link between this and the actual file locations so when you move the files into the project directory as well then the project breaks.

This wouldn't be an issue if the system looked within the current directory before consulting the XML file but it doesn't.

Therefore, my solution is to always finish off a project by putting all the files for the project in the same directory and then changing the XML file to set all the entries to just the filenames.

It works, who am I to question.

But if anyone out there can tell me where I can go to set this requirement as a permanent option then I would be very happy to hear from you. It is probably some hangover from Visual Studio and someone somewhere is having a laugh thinking oh all you have to do is set this flag in such and such a menu option and it is all fixed automatically.

Neil, Dave, Darren, James, Gordon, Thomas, Andy anyone. I am not fussy who comes back first, but there is a Belgian beer in it for the first one with a sensible response.