question

It's pretty arbitrary and you'll get a different list from everyone. I'll toss mine in. I love Red Gate. I use a number of tools in their tool belt on a daily basis. SQL Prompt, SQL Compare are open on my desktop most of the time. (Disclosure, I rave about Red Gate so much, I'm a member of the "Friends of Red Gate" program). I also use Idera's Diagnostic Manager on a regular basis. Finally, I've been using a new tool called Confio Ignite. It's a pretty special little monitoring tool that mainly collects data on wait stats and uses those to identify the worst performing queries on your system.

Those are my principal tools. I have a few others that I use occasionally, but those are the ones that are worth mentioning.

currently I use Idera's Diagnostic Manager and Admin toolset. I have also tried for a while tools from Quest(spotlight) and Redgate and SQL Sentry.

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Edit: Never tried 3rd party backup tool before but Quests light speed and Red-gate backup pro seems the industry standard.

Pretty unsurprisingly, I use the ones I wrote... :)

Hi, I have built free SQL Server 2008/2012 tool [**SQL Hunting Dog**][1]. SQL Hunting Dog is not an alternative to Red Gate Search or SSMS Toolpack. It is more a productivity addin which give your fast and smooth search inside SQL Server Management Studio (2008 or 2012). See an independent review [here][2] [1]: http://sql-hunting-dog.com [2]: http://sqlraid.wordpress.com/2013/08/05/sql-hunting-dog-search-tool-for-ssms-quick-test/