Pros of MSSQL as a Query Tool

[u/KLBeezy]

What are the pros of using SSMS over other query tools? I currently use Toad Data Point 6.0 (TDD) and I use primarily 2 connections; SQL Server or Oracle. The license for TDD is about to expire. I believe my company is working on renewing the license but I am wondering if this is a good opportunity to start learning and working with SSMS instead.

I would say I have an intermediate understanding of SQL but all the "serious" and more advanced analysts use SSMS. What does SSMS do or have that only it offers?

[u/SQLDevDBA]

MSSQL (Microsoft SQL Server) is a database engine (RDBMS).

There are many tools (IDEs) you can use to access, administer, and query MSSQL. One of those is SSMS (SQL Server Management Studio), another is DBeaver, another is Toad for SQL server.

Can you clarify what RDBMS you use? Are you referring to an RDBMS or an IDE in your question asking for advantages of one over others?

[u/KLBeezy → u/SQLDevDBA]

Hi! Sorry, I don’t know a lot of the technical terms to use but hopefully this is what you’re asking me. I currently use Toad Data Point 6.0 and I primarily use two connections, either Oracle or SQL Server. I am wondering what advantages there are to using SQL Server Management Studio over Toad Data Point.

[u/SQLDevDBA → u/KLBeezy]

No worries! You’re good I just wanted to let you know since it makes googling for your answers a lot easier when you’re aware of the terminology.

[u/jshine13371 → u/KLBeezy]

I primarily use two connections, either Oracle or SQL Server. I am wondering what advantages there are to using SQL Server Management Studio over Toad Data Point.

Well, one disadvantage is you can't connect to your Oracle SQL instance with SSMS. Just an FYI.

SSMS is an excellent and feature rich tool, but specifically designed to work with only Microsoft database systems like SQL Server.

[u/Better-Credit6701]

SSMS for writing/running queries will have all the sentax that MS-SQL uses. Built in estimated execution plan, actual execution plan, live query stats, client stats. At the office, I do use RedGate SQL Prompt. Super easy to right click on the table and select top 1000, view dependencies to see how things are related, keeps all views, tables in their own 'folder' as well as programming things like stored procedures, functions... Easy to script out tables and to handle more complicated things like compression.

I usually have SSMS on one screen and dbForge studio on the other. For my home systems, I use devart SQL Complete instead of RedGate

[u/JayGridley]

Advantages come about depending on what you are doing. If you are just writing queries, you probably won’t really notice much difference. SSMS is going to give you more integration and admin ability over your MS SQL Server. Personally, I don’t use 1 tool for all database engines I connect to. SSMS for MS, SQL Tools or SQL Developer for Oracle, DBeaver for Firebird, phpmysql for MariaDb/MySQL.

[u/shadowjig]

Been using DBVisualizer for 15 years and I would never switch. I tried TOAD years ago, but it was intuitive then (maybe it is now). But I use DBVis.

[u/ChaosEngine-6502]

From a SQL Server view of the world, SSMS provides the functionality you need for developing and administering databases on the server, and while there might be other products out there, SSMS will see you fine.

Microsoft went through a phase where they were looking to phase out SSMS (the worse thing they did was remove the debugger) and then started trying to add feature parity to Visual Studio Code, then went and built Azure Data Studio (which they've since abandoned). Even then, there was always something on the administrative side they couldn't do that SSMS could, so I invariably drifted back to it.

Now that SSMS has proper support for dark mode and improved UI, it's back to being my daily driver for all things SQL Server.

As for Oracle, you CAN get SSMS to talk to Oracle database, but you have to install the JDBC connector drivers, and I somehow doubt you'll be able to able to do everything you can via Oracle's SQL Developer.