Development Tools
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Looking for some good input here 🙂
I am in an environment where developers, end users, etc. are using Enterprise Manager for all sorts of goodies. Yes, I know this is bad and have many negative feelings about them using this to view and change data. And yes I did say 'change.'
Does anyone having any recomendations for developer tools, or any other tools that are out there for SQL Server. I am familiar with PL/SQL Developer and Toad for Oracle, but am wondering about SQL Server.
Thanks 🙂
"Keep Your Stick On the Ice" ..Red Green -
At the moment I think it's a hard to go past mssqlXpress and Query Analyzer for development.
mssqlXpress has the advantage of Visual Sourcesafe integration. When there's something that can't be done easily in mssqlXpress (an ever diminishing list) you have Query Analyzer.
Hope this helps
Phill Carter
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Colt 45 - the original point and click interface
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Colt 45 - the original point and click interface
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quote:
Looking for some good input here 🙂You may not recognize this as good input, but I am a developer and have a choice of tools to work with. The best front end I have found for SQL Server is Visual Foxpro. Foxpro is an OOP language with its own data environment that work wonderfully with SQL Server. There are three parts to the previous sentence you may not fully have appreciated.
Foxpro is a good development language in its own right. Its syntax and structure is not unlike VB, but it has class inheritance.
Foxpro is a good front end for SQL Server. In good part because ---
Foxpro has its own native data environment. A vary good data engine which is the basis for ADO.
Foxpro has most of the advantages of .Net but with much less of a footprint, but .Net does not have a native data environment. Access has a native data environment, but is no match for Foxpro for serious developers.
There is a committed world wide community of Foxpro developers. Microsoft wants to keep Foxpro a secret because it makes more money off of selling multiple products to achieve the same functionality available in Foxpro. Foxpro wasn't invented by Bill Gates, but I am delighted that Microsoft continues to support and enhance Foxpro (newly released version 8 and another release already in the works).
Foxpro is one of the best kept secrets around. Foxpro is a deep product with a rich history. It may take some effort on your part to get up to speed with it, but there is plenty of good (and cheap) support.
I feel extremely lucky to know Foxpro. The company I work for used Access a great deal so that end users can have an easier front end. As a developer with much better tools available, Access is merely an aggravation. My company recently went thru a fairly painful upgrade from Access 97 to Access 2000. I single handedly upgraded Foxpro 6 to Foxpro 7 within a week and no one was even aware it happened.
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I personnaly like Delphi for database development.
It's making a fast executable (standalone exe) with a fast development time.
You can find plenty of free and payable components where you can do virtually what you want with.
It's object oriented too, you can also access easily to the windows system functions.
So if you wouldn't have a native Object Pascal function just simple call a Windows one.
But... It is not an M$ tool.
I don't know why but I cannot get familiar with the M$ development tools (VC, VB..) I used to use Access as a frontend (in the Access 1.1 time) I've liked some of those features like subforms/subreports but do not speek about performance when you are talking about Access even as a frontend.
I used to work with SQLWindows from Gupta as well.
I really liked it.
The main problem was there the very expensive runtime environment. (They have solved this issue by now as far as I know).
So I personnally are looking for a cheap, fast easy to use development tool beeing able to produce an executable which is small and fast.
But I'm afraid that that tools does not exists
Bye
Gabor
Bye
Gabor -
quote:
quote:
Looking for some good input here 🙂You may not recognize this as good input, but I am a developer and have a choice of tools to work with. The best front end I have found for SQL Server is Visual Foxpro.....
I second that! My whole development team is focussed on VFP as the front end to our SQL2K based system. When complex data manipulation is needed, you often need to jump through hoops to do it with tSQL, but with VFP it is usually simple. I realise that this may change with Yukon and the ability to use .NET for stored procedures etc. but until then - no contest!
If you need to make changes to data structures, then VFP can do anything that Query Analyzer can using SQL pass through code, but you can also program using the DMO to do things that way.
Tony Bater
Tony -
I still use QA, plus VB6/VB.Net. Looking forward to better tools in Yukon!
Andy
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Embarcadero Technologies makes Rapid SQL, which is used by a lot of people. It's completely cross platform, so you can do development with SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, and Sybase in the same tool. Has version control, procedure generataion, good ISQL capabilities, all that good stuff... Pretty cheap too.
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I have been using DBArtisan for years with regard to data querying and manipulation. A lot of folks here use RapidSQL but only for Sybase as they think you should use QueryAnalyzer for SQL Server (it's free). I use DBArtisan as I prefer one tool for Sybase & SQL Server. My understanding with RapidSQL is you have to purchase the version for the platform you are working on.
My brother uses VFP and loves it. I have no experience with it. For client apps I've used PowerBuilder in the past and straight ASP for web design.
Good luck
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Great stuff everyone. I too like the Delphi environment (and love Borland's C++ with VCL{I think Microsoft makes most of their Windows apps with the VCL, but may be wrong]) and think there is a point in my fuzzy past where I worked with RapidSQL. It's really not the developers I am too worried about...It's the end users using Enterprise Manager to change the data.
We will most likely be going to Yukon as quickly as we can...
"Keep Your Stick On the Ice" ..Red Green -
I've been doing SQL work for about 8 years as well as VB and ASP. A long time ago I started using Visual Studio for all my development work in SQL. Originally I was going against Oracle 7.x, and for the last 5 years I've been using it against SQL Server. VS gives me the ability to link to source control, macros, columnar selection, and direct access to the database objects. Basically what I do is work against a development machine and then save the object as a file and check in the script to source control. If I choose to I can actually run scripts directly inside VS against the database. I chose to use VS as my editor as I have always had it on my machine anyway so I never had to buy anything else to develop in. QA is a terrible editor in many ways. but I usually have 3 instances of it open at any given time along with 2 instance of Visual Studio, SQL Profiler, and Enterprise Manager.
Gary Johnson
Microsoft Natural Language Group
DBA, Sr. DB Engineer
Gary Johnson
Microsoft Natural Language Group
DBA, Sr. DB EngineerThis posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. The opinions expressed in this post are my own and may not reflect that of my employer.
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VFP (FoxPro) is probably the best swiss army tool I have ever used. However, I am slowly moving away from it because -
a) The lack of enthusiastic Microsoft support, for the product, is just not there anymore (if you don't beleive it, try finding companies looking for Foxpro developers), and
b)Most of the big corporations have not made FoxPro an accepted standard (among the other accepted tools).
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