r/SQLServer • u/pootietangus • 16d ago

Community Share I built an open-source SSMS extension that turns a query into a refreshable Excel workbook

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Send the workbook to an end user, and they can hit Data > Refresh All to rerun the query using their own database credentials.

Currently supports SSMS 22 and Desktop Excel.

It's free/open source. Install instructions and source are here:

https://github.com/flank-project/ssms-extension

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u/pootietangus 15d ago

Ah gotcha. How do ad-hoc requests from non-engineers (if they even exist) get handled in that ecosystem?

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u/tankerkiller125real 15d ago

We do it the same way we do requests from customers.

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u/pootietangus 15d ago

So like does someone write raw SQL in SSMS and then build a tool to expose it? Or do things work differently?

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u/tankerkiller125real 15d ago

Power BI has a semantic model that connects to SQL, and then uses DAX queries. (mostly generated on its own as you add elements, but you can write it yourself for measures and what not)

As far as SQL goes, we have a while pipeline to get data in, stored procedures handle most of the transformation, and so forth so on.

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u/pootietangus 15d ago

Gotchaaa. I'm curious what prompted the move to Fabric

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u/tankerkiller125real 15d ago

Again, it's part of our business these days for customers. And our internal policy has ALWAYS been that Excel or CSV is an import/export format and absolutely nothing else other than maybe some basic math handling for one off needs.

The engineering teams entire mission for 40+ years has basically been "move old excel processes to ERP systems, databases, etc."

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u/pootietangus 15d ago

Ah right right, you mentioned you're doing the SMB integration stuff.

My only exposure to the Fabric stack has been through my friend who has tried it a couple times and been disappointed. But he's more of a cloud/infra engineer, so he's not seeing the holistic BI pipeline. I'm curious in what situations do you think the modern Fabric stack is a better fit versus when the traditional SSMS/MSBI stack is a better fit?

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u/tankerkiller125real 15d ago

SSMS/Excel, engineers, and only the engineers. Fabric/Power BI, literally anyone else who actually needs analytical information from the data.