Yesterday I talked about how the ability to query mulitple servers was my favorite feature in SQL 2008.  Today, I thought I would tell you how it work and it could not be simpler.  

From the View menu on the menubar, open Registered Servers

Perhaps it is the old librarian in me, but I have always liked to classify things.   I have always used Server Groups.  I have noticed though that a lot of other dbas do not seem to use them very often.   Anyway.  

 

    Create a New Server Group, by right clicking on Local Server Groups.

    Enter name of group.

 

I should note, that you can't really try this out on the beta since to see it in all its glory you really need more than one server.   I know a person should not do this, but I like this feature so much that I am running 2008 Studio Manager on my laptop.

 

    Add a server and your connection credentials.

    Add another server, etc

You can add different versions and edtions of SQL Servers to a single group, this works for earlier versions of SQL Server.  I have not tried on a 7.0 server but it does work on 2008.

    Right click on the server group name

    Select New Query

 

At the bottom of the query window, the number of server connections will be displayed.

 

    Select @@Version

 

The results will show the servername and the result of the select.   If you prefer you can hide the servername or add a column for user name.  You can also bring the results in individual grids, but I don't see the point of that.  You can make those changes in the options.