I work on a Mac and in a bandwidth rich environment, such as my work network, I usually connect to SQL Server via a MSSQL client running on a terminal server which I access over RDP. I like the GUI with the added intelliSense features from RedGate tools, plus the OSX RDP Client by Microsoft works great.
While traveling, I prefer to have access to a low bandwidth solution. I started investigating and playing with a few OSX MSSQL clients available.
I tried all the tools listed here including a DB Visualizer plugin for eclipse. In my analysis I factored in cost and feature set as well as Mean time to annoyance (MTTA).
Tool |
Cost |
MTTA |
SQLPro for MSSQL |
>$0.00 |
Unknown |
SQuirrel SQL (free, open source) |
Free Open Source |
Immediate (Not so intuitive) |
DB Visualizer |
Freemium |
Tolerable up to a day |
SQL Workbench/J (free, open source) |
Free Open Source |
Immediate (Not so intuitive) |
Oracle SQL Developer (free) |
Free Not Open Source |
Still Using |
TOAD For MAC |
Free |
Immediate (No MSSQL Support on OSX) |
My recommendation is to use the free Oracle SQL Developer with this instructions for setting up the MSSQL JTDS driver. This tool gets the job done!
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