Script Storage

Update here: Script Storage Update

Throughout my career, my scripts have been a vital piece of my work. Where I store them has changed over the years.

The challenge has been in finding a repository that is reliable, searchable, accessible from where I work, and that looks good with color-coding. Additionally, I don’t want to pay money for it. I guess that some things are just so basic that paying money for them doesn’t seem necessary.

Here are some good options, including the one that I currently use.

SSMS Template Explorer

SSMS has something called Template Explorer. You can find it if you go to SSMS and go to View, Template Explorer. It contains the default templates from Microsoft and is perhaps the most convenient place to have your scripts. After all, they are in the same app that you would use them in. Seems perfect, but there are some downsides.

Unfortunately, they reside on your computer so there is no guarantee that they will be there after a hard drive failure. Additionally, if you work on multiple computers, you cannot easily access the scripts.

The downsides are not all that bad, in fact they are typical of anything you keep on computer. For my usage, however, those downsides prevent me from being able to use this as a solution.

USB

USB’s are nice because of their portability. You can store a portable script viewer of your liking and store the text files on it, as well.

Sadly, USB drives are not considered the most secure piece of technology, therefore many companies disable the USB ports on the company computers. That alone puts the kibosh on that one. But beyond that, the convenient portability of USB drives also means that they can be easily left at home or just lost. Also, there’s something that I don’t trust about their reliability for storage. I’ve had a couple of them fail over the years so I don’t like putting important information on them that would set me back professionally if it failed.

Dropbox Paper

This is the one I currently use.

Dropbox now has something called “Paper”, which allows you to store things in a way that is paper-esque. It’s way beyond a plain text file but retains simplicity.

The organization is self explanatory. You can make folders and sub-folders until your heart’s content. Each script can have its own document. You can make a code block by hitting three back tics (“`). Then, when you paste in the code, it will detect the language and color-code it. Alternatively, you can manually select a language type.

The search function works perfectly so you can quickly pull up any script as long as you remember a key word.

Thankfully, where I currently work, Dropbox is considered professional enough that it is not a blocked site. If that changes, I will have to revisit this.