How to use the SET LOG MESSAGE Feature Within ElevateDB

The more I use ElevateDB the more impressed I get with this product. Last week I visited the ElevateDB support forum, most likely related to a syntax issue I was trying to resolve. As I read through some of the posts written by other users, I came across a very curious and interesting tidbit of information. A user mentioned the following:

"If you add a log message before the OPEN Crsr, you will see that the function is executed for each row."

This certainly got my investigative juices flowing. I had to find out what he meant. He was referring to the SET LOG MESSAGE statement. There were no pictures to show how to implement this log message feature so I began digging around and figured out how this works.

ElevateDB comes with it's own GUI called ElevateDB Manager. It's similar to the SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) Microsoft distributes.

Here is a screenshot of a New.SQL script inside ElevateDB Manager

The SQL script is a simple loop from 1 to 100 that displays a log message each time X is a multiple of 7.

SCRIPT BEGIN DECLARE MyMod INTEGER; DECLARE X INTEGER DEFAULT 0; SET MyMod = 7; SET LOG MESSAGE TO 'MyMod = ' + CAST(MyMod AS VARCHAR); WHILE X < 100 do   SET X = X + 1;   IF X MOD MyMod = 0 THEN     SET LOG MESSAGE TO 'X = ' + CAST(X AS VARCHAR);   END IF; END WHILE; END

If you execute this script it tells you that "The script was executed successfully in 0 seconds". But where are the log messages?

You have to turn them on.

With the Explorer > Log Messages visible you see all the SET LOG MESSAGE statements. The log messages continue to accumulate each time you execute a script. There are two undocumented ventures available within the Log Messages pane: Save and Clear.

Simply right click anywhere within the log message pane you have an option to either Save or Clear the log messages.

I love the SET LOG MESSAGE feature and use it all the time. I find it extremely helpful and I hope you do as well.

Enjoy
Semper Fi
Gunny Mike