Given that Microsoft now considers Linux a ‘first-class citizen’, SQL Server 2017 offers native support for Linux. It is engineered to be cross-platform, and that’s good news for Linux administrators and open source developers. Microsoft’s support for Linux (and open source in general), has come into clearer focus, and the company’s mission now seems to be all about bringing its tools to wherever its users are.
Microsoft has been known for proprietary software, and this openness to the open source community came as a surprise; the development is quite recent, and one in the right direction. SQL Server has had a myriad of GUI and CLI tools. These tools have also, along with SQL Server itself, have become cross-platform. These tools are almost equally as good on Linux as Windows, and they help effectively manage, develop, and administer SQL Server. Some of the tools are:
- SSMS
- Sqlcmd
- Bcp
- Sqlpackage
- Mssql-conf
- Mssql-scripter
- DMV tool
- SQL Operations Studio
- MSSQL-Cli
- SQL Extension for VS code
At first, it seems like a myriad of them. Taking one piece at a time helps with understanding the tools. Let us try to classify these tools based on what they are useful for:
Further reading
Highlights
- Support for Custom Query execution
- Data can be viewed as JSON
- Bash supports utilities such as cut, grep, sed, and awk, etc.
- Projection of the live/real-time DMV data
- Cross-platform tools which work on both SQL Server on Windows as well as SQL Server on Linux
- DBFS is available for Ubuntu, RedHat Enterprise Linux, and CentOS as of writing this article.
Happy Learning!
