End-user Query Builder Tool?

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End-user Query Builder Tool?

Chris W

SSChasing Mays

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February 2, 2010 at 12:57 pm

#141074

I realize this is only "loosely" related to SQL Server (and I'll be cross-posting to an Excel forum) but...anyone out there have any experience/recommendations for an inexpensive/free GUI query builder tool primarily for use against SQL Server 2005/2000? The tool needs to be easy to use (think power-users with no T-SQL experience). Will mostly be used to import query results into MS Excel.

Something along the lines of MS Query but without that tools inherent limitations around OUTER JOINS etc?

Thanks in advance,

Chris.

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GSquared SSC Guru Points: 260824 More actions · Answer 1

MS Access is excellent for that. Link it to the SQL server, query building can be all drag-and-drop and clicking, without writing a line of code.

Reporting Services can do something similar, but Access is pretty intuitive and pretty easy to learn.

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LutzM SSC Guru Points: 107049 More actions · Answer 2

GSquared (2/2/2010)

MS Access is excellent for that. Link it to the SQL server, query building can be all drag-and-drop and clicking, without writing a line of code. ...

I thought of Access as well but I'd like to add some limitations:

- the server should not be a production system (I'd rather use a mirrored db)

Reason: AFAIK, Access is using an ODBC driver that'll actually copy all data to the client side and will do every kind of JOINS, WHERE clauses on the client side. So, it may take a moment to get just a few rows as a result set of two tables with a some hundred thousand rows used in a join due to "data traffic"... Meanwhile, the server side tables might be locked...

- the connection should have a user with limited readonly privileges

Reason: OP's statement "power-users with no T-SQL experience"

- It depends on the MS Office version that's available whether Access is included or not, and there is a cost difference IIRC...

- The results of those queries must not be business crucial

Reason: If power users have no T-SQL experience they might use an inner join where an outer join would have been required leading to wrong results

Other than that: I'll second Gus. 🙂

Lutz
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ssmagin Valued Member Points: 65 More actions · Answer 3

MS Access is good, but it isn't free and it's visual query builder is not too powerful as sometimes needed. Moreover, it does not support specific options of SQL Server dialect.

You may have a look at FlySpeed SQL Query. It is free if you don't need export to Excel and printing and it has the best visual query builder i've ever seen with full support of MS SQL dialect. Of course, it is able to build queries with OUTER joins, as well as sub-queries, derived tables and CTE.