Beginning Microsoft SQL Server 2008 ... - S3 Tech Training

Chapter 8: Being Normal: Normalization and Other Basic Design Issues
Figure 8-11
That’s because our table exists only as an edited item on the diagram — it won’t be added until we actually
save our changes.
If you look at the CustomerNotes table in the diagram window at this point, you
should see a * to the right of the name — that’s there to tell you that there are unsaved
changes in that table.
Now, switch back to the Management Studio. There are two save options:
❑ Save: This saves the changes to both the diagram and to the database (this is the little disk icon
on the toolbar).
❑ Generate Change Script: This saves the changes to a script so it can be run at a later time. (This
is found in the Table Designer menu or as an icon on the Table Designer toolbar.
The Table Designer toolbar contains several smart icons that provide quick access to
many frequently used table design features. Unfortunately, it does not come up by
default in the designer under the RTM version of SQL Server 2008. You can add it by
right-clicking open space in the toolbar and selecting the Table Designer toolbar.
Go ahead and just choose Save, and you’ll be prompted for the name of your diagram and confirmation
(after all, you’re about to alter your database — there’s no “undo” for this).
Confirm the changes, and try running that query again against your CustomerNotes table. You should
not receive an error this time because the table has now been created. (You won’t get any rows back, but
the query should still run.)
How It Works
When we create a diagram, SQL Server creates script behind the scenes that looks basically just as our
scripts did back in Chapter 6 when we were scripting our own changes. However, these scripts are not
actually generated and run until we choose to save the diagram.
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