Running Queries in Visual Studio

If you’ve never used SQL before, you may want to play around with it and create some sample queries before you start using it in an ASP.NET site. Most database products provide some sort of tool for testing queries. If you’re using a full version of SQL Server, you can try SQL Server Management Studio or SQL Query Analyzer. If you don’t want to use an extra tool, you can run your queries using the Server Explorer window described earlier. Just follow these steps in  Visual Studio:
1. Right-click your connection, and choose New Query.
2. Choose the table (or tables) you want to use in your query from the Add Table dialog box (as shown in Figure 15-5), click Add, and then click Close.
3. You’ll now see a handy query-building window. You can create your query by adding check marks next to the fields you want, or you can edit the SQL by hand in the lower portion of the window. Best of all, if you edit the SQL directly, you can type in anything—you don’t need to stick to the tables you selected in step 2, and you don’t need to restrict yourself to Select statements.
4. When you’re ready to run the query, select Query Designer ä Execute SQL from the menu. Assuming your query doesn’t have any errors, you’ll get one of two results. If you’re selecting records, the results will appear at the bottom of the window . If you’re deleting or updating records, a message box will appear informing you how many records were affected.