One reason that I often hear for the apparent inability of certain people to blog is that there is no way for Community Server to display code. It isn't actually that hard. The obvious choice is to use Phil Factor's prettifier. It is the reason he wrote it. If you need to show exactly what is in Visual Studio, or SSMS, there is another way.

The problem you have is that Community Server is usually set to only allow FONT tags to enhance text. This makes life difficult, though it ensures that a blogger can't cause too much havoc with surrounding parts of the page.

Paste your code into Word. Make sure that it has pasted it in, using the 'keep source formatting' option. Then, save it as HTML. Alternatively, you can use Outlook. (I set the format of the message to be HTML. I then send the code to myself, right-click the results and select 'view source code'.)

I then take the HTML code into a nice text editor, 'top and tail' it (take out the HTML, BODY tags and the DIVs, leaving just the Ps in place)  and do the following substitutions with the objective of taking out the SPANs (no need really as they don't get rendered anyway) and changing the Ps into BRs

You may find that the font has been styled for a different size, depending on the setting in Visual Studio. This means that yo will need to remove style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New"' rather than 11.0pt.

Then create, or edit, the blog. Paste the modified code into the HTML pane (the tab is on the bottom-right of the panel in Community server) Select the code and, in the design pane, make the size of the code 2 rather than 3. Select the code and specify that it should be Courier

All that we're actually doing here is trying to remove all the Word silliness of trying to be all things to all men. All you actually need is the colour information and the non-breaking spaces to do the indentation. The final substitution makes the paragraph tag render as you want it to.

ALTER Function [dbo].[ufsRemoveDelimited]
    (
      @String VARCHAR(MAX),
      @OpeningDelimiter CHAR(1),
      @ClosingDelimiter CHAR(1)
    )
RETURNS VARCHAR(8000)
AS BEGIN
    DECLARE @newString VARCHAR(8000)
    IF @OpeningDelimiter = @ClosingDelimiter
        BEGIN
            RETURN NULL
        END
    IF @OpeningDelimiter + @ClosingDelimiter + @String IS NULL
        BEGIN
            RETURN @String
        END
    SELECT  @NewString = ''
    SELECT  @newString = @newString + SUBSTRING(@String, number, 1)
    FROM    numbers
    WHERE   number <= LEN(REPLACE(@string, ' ', '|'))
            AND CHARINDEX(@OpeningDelimiter, @string + @OpeningDelimiter,
                          number) < CHARINDEX(@ClosingDelimiter,
                                              @string + ' '
                                              + @closingDelimiter, number)
            AND number <> CHARINDEX(@OpeningDelimiter, @string, number)
    RETURN @NewString
   END

Here is some C#, copied out of Visual Studio 2005

// Marshal.cs
using System;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
 
class PlatformInvokeTest
{
    [DllImport("msvcrt.dll")]
    public static extern int puts(
        [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPStr)]
        string m);
    [DllImport("msvcrt.dll")]
    internal static extern int _flushall();
 
 
    public static void Main()
    {
        puts("Hello World!");
        _flushall();
    }
}

Here is a small sample of VB code

Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, _
    ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
 
    ' Stores the return value.
    Dim RetVal As Integer
    RetVal = MBox(0, "Declare DLL Test", "Windows API MessageBox", _
        MB_ICONQUESTION Or MB_YESNO)
 
    ' Check the return value.
    If RetVal = IDYES Then
        MsgBox("You chose Yes")
    Else
        MsgBox("You chose No")
    End If
End Sub

I wandered into Red-Gate's offices the other day. I'd been momentarily distracted by the autumn leaves, thoughtfully strewn in the hallway, probably by a visiting Zen Buddhist to remind us of the sacred presence of nature even in the Techno Park. Suddenly I was waylaid by the charming Tanya to take part in a bug-hunt. Somehow, I found myself in a room full of laptop computers and various developers, varying from the apprehensive (SQL Prompt developers) to the smug (ex-SQL Prompt developers).

We were giving SQL Prompt 3.8 RC a quick post-test check-over before the new release candidate version of 3.8 is made available.

The interesting thing about SQL Prompt 3.8 is that it is now using the code reformatter from SQL Refactor to lay out your SQL code nicely. This means that, for the first time, even the users of Query Analyser now are able to reformat code automatically. There are twenty different aspects of the reformatting you can change, in four different sections. It is a very clever piece of code that, for me, doubles the usefulness of SQL Prompt.

There are one or two other features that are less immediately exciting than the reformatting code but would make a big difference to me. One of these is the 'tooltips'-style help for whatever object that you rest the mouse pointer over. Wonderful. I'm an old-stager with IDEs. I like a nice clean window free from clutter, and loathe having to do incessant clicking in the Object Explorer to do stuff. This is why I reach for such old-time practices such as sp_help and sp_helptext. If SQL Prompt can help me keep the clutter away so I can remind myself of the parameters to a routine or the columns of a table without having to scrub what's in the results window, then that's a real bonus. Other new features include Object Definitions, and a new Summary view in the schema panel.

SQL Prompt is one of those product that one can love, but never unconditionally. There are so many different ways that Database Developers work and it is presumptuous to think that it could ever be possible to construct a tool that would satisfy everyone. Perhaps that is why Microsoft have taken so long to provide intellisense for SQL Server developers. It has to work for such a diverse community of users. However, by diversifying into managing layout, and providing all these nice features for even those unfortunates still wrestling with SQL Server 2000, SQL Prompt's future is assured, whatever arrives by way of intellisense in SQL Server 2008.

I found SQL Prompt irritating to use until I adopted the obvious strategy of setting the triggering to manual (this should have been the default). Now you just invoke SQL Prompt just at the point of those senior moments when you forget the name of the table, routine or parameter. Another handy feature is being able to limit the trigger words that invoke SQL Prompt. There is a bit of work to do in order to make it function the way you want but the effort is worth it.

The Red-Gate bug-hunts are good fun for the huunters, but painful for the application developers whose work is being treated the same way as a fox by foxhunters. TallyHo! I sat next to a developer who had the habit of throwing his head back and laughing in an evil gloating way every time he found a bug. I gazed in wonderment at the restraint shown by SQL Prompt's developers whose welcoming smiles only glazed over momentarily in response to the baying pack of bug-hunters, as they pushed firmly into the back of their minds any homicidal instincts towards the gleeful bug-hunters 'on the scent'. There is a certain etiquette in conveying the news to a hard-working developer that there is a tiny flaw in his masterpiece. Perhaps the pretence of amazed surprise that such a thing could possibly exist. Certainly, gloating or reproach is not an option, especially if, one day, the roles will be reversed, and it is your software being torn to shreds.

Fortunately, the software worked surprisingly well for a beta (it is now a release candidate as I write - 2nd April 2008) so we're getting it ahead of schedule. I, for one, will be pestering the developers over what I see as its little quirks and irritations, but I'm fully expecting people on The Red-Gate Product Forumpraising the very features I find irritating. That's all part of the software development process, I suppose

One of the best, if you haven't looked, is the thread that started off on the Refactor Forum. Andras asked 'We support nearly forty options to customize laying out SQL, but is it enough?'. There were 41 responses, and the resulting thread was wildly popular. There are so many different ways of formatting SQL and there seemed to be an advocate for every one.

So, is there going to be a version that includes all the different layouts? Mike O'Neil wasn't the only one wanting to know. I'm a great fan of Refactor, but I've never quite tweaked the layout exactly how I want. Wthere wasn't great encouragement about a new version despite the interest in formatting. The roadmap only goes to the end of Q1 of this year so lets' hope Q2 for a new version as this is the Red-Gate tool I rely on the most.

There is hope, though as SQL Prompt 3.8 will hopefully be available at the end of Q1. The Pro version evidently incorporates the Layout SQL functionality from SQL Refactor. It is an interesting move, since a lot of people aren't quite sure of the difference between the two products. and one wonders if the new Pro version will prove to be the logical line of development for the products

SQL Prompt 3.7 patch release came out quietly, but the product is improving the whole time. I very quickly learned to set 'triggering' to manual (Cntl+Spacebar) when using SQL Prompt, and find it very handy as it cuts down on the need to keep accessing the Object Browser.  

The SQL Data compare forum had a wonderful thread where people were asking for enhancements to the product and Richard kept bobbing up and explaining that they were there already. For me it was rivetting to hear of extreme problems encountered by users such as 'tons of tables with no indexes'.

Over on the Alpha/Beta forums, the buzz around the Data Generator is dying down now as the developers start to assimilate all the feedback, and code the good ideas into the next beta. Now it is the turn of Dan and the SQL Response Beta.

As I write this, it is early days, and I suspect that there will be a huge diversity of opinion on the things that should be monitored in SQL Server to give it a health-check. In the pub, it is always a debate that ends in flushed faces and Beer-glasses getting thrown.

The Red-Gate site now has Blogs. I must admit that I had slightly mixed feelings about this, probably because someone tried to copy the existing blogs across from Simple-Talk and all the comments dropped off like autumn leaves, causing much confusion. However, Neil rallied round and started cross-posting from his wonderful blog on BusinessOfSoftware, However, the true purpose of the Red-Gate Blogs was illustrated best by David Connell in How to write a Generator for SQL Data Generator 1.0 Beta, whereas over here, Lionel showed how well a Red-Gate developer could blog on Simple-Talk with his SQL Puzzle 9