Redmond Roundup: Tooling Around in Your Database

RedmondMag.com just published a great article by Peter Varhol, a principal at Technology Strategy Research LLC, an industry analysis and consulting firm. This “Redmond Roundup” discusses common database management tasks and reviews some of the tools that are popular in that space:

Sometimes you don’t need a full-fledged database-management environment. Maybe you just need to go in and add a field, change a table or write an ad hoc query. Certainly you can do all those things in the SQL Server administration tools, writing your own SQL at the command line. Unless you’re a SQL expert, though, that process can be lengthy and error-prone. Having a graphical tool that’s easy to learn and use — and one that you don’t have to use every day to remember how to perform simple actions — is much more productive. Simply point it at the database, click the mouse to tell the tool what to do and your database maintenance is done…

Varhol examines three leading database tools and concludes by awarding Altova’s very own DatabaseSpy Redmond Roundup Champion, noting, “DatabaseSpy is the best overall in terms of range of features.” Image source: http://redmondmag.com/features/article.asp?editorialsid=2530