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!
Outliers 