Shortcut: Play a sound when a query completes in SSMS

In a previous post, I mentioned that when a long running query completes, I might not have been waiting around for it, and so I wanted to know when it completed.

But sometimes I do wait around for a query to complete, yet I’m distracted by other things and don’t realize that the query has actually completed. That’s not surprising because if a query takes a long time, I’m probably going to go on with other work while that’s running.

So I want to get a prompt when the query finishes.

SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) does provide an option for this. In Tools, Options, Query Results, there is an option to Play the Windows default beep when a query batch completes.

I do wish it was a stronger option than this but at least it’s a start.

What I’d particularly like would be:

• Ability to play a different sound, not just the default beep.
• Ability to enable/disable this on a specific query window once a query is already running.

Having this on all the time would be quite annoying, so I’d be pretty selective about using it in its current form.

2018-08-30