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Looking for small footprint SQL client
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voetius
Grundrisse
#1 - 2016-08-30 11:09:07 UTC
Hi all, I've lately become interested in learning SQL and maybe going for accreditation. I have a background in DB programming so learning the syntax and concepts seems fairly straightforward. However I haven't been having much luck finding a simple program that will let me do things like create some small tables, run queries and just try things out generally.

The problem with google searches is I just get too many results, and having a look around the Microsoft site either gets too many results and I spend ages looking through them or find nothing recent/relevant.

I'm sure that 4 - 5 years ago I dl'ed a small program from Microsoft that did just what I want but I can't recall what it was called. Ideally I'd prefer not to run an industry server just to mess around a bit but if that is the only option then I'll have to take it.

This would be for either my win8 desktop or win8 laptop.

Thanks for any help or suggestions.
Violet Hurst
Fedaya Recon
#2 - 2016-08-30 16:44:24 UTC  |  Edited by: Violet Hurst
Well you will need to have some DB server running to do stuff. A client without a server is useless. Keep in mind that a server is just some piece of software running on your machine, it doesn't have to be connected to other machines for testing purposes.
If you want free stuff, the bigger ones are MySQL and Postgres. As a graphical frontend you could go with MySQL workbench or maybe phpMyAdmin. If you want to stick with Microsoft but don't want a full MS SQL Server you could go with MS Access.


TL;DR: MySQL workbench
voetius
Grundrisse
#3 - 2016-09-01 17:18:31 UTC

Thanks for the reply, I will take all that into consideration. ATM I'm going to concentrate on finishing my first read through of the doorstop that I have called SQL The Complete Reference, then I will have another look at what is available.

Cheers.
Violet Hurst
Fedaya Recon
#4 - 2016-09-01 21:42:43 UTC
I see, from theory to practice. I'd still recommend finding yourself a small project to do though, you'll learn much faster that way.
Hmm, actually in your OP you mentioned you have a background in DB programming, but wanted to learn SQL What did you mean with "DB programming" there? Did you write applications that use a DB as a backend but handle all interactions with it via ORM frameworks or some such?
voetius
Grundrisse
#5 - 2016-09-02 09:05:41 UTC

By DB Programming I meant that in the legacy system that I'm used to I would write programs and "procs", as well as queries that could be run from a command prompt. These are analogous to Embedded and Dynamic SQL and stored procedures, or programmatic access to the database backend. There was also an api for things like public key cryptography and such like. So I was a database applications programmer as well as being involved with database admin, running training courses for the query language we used, amongst other things. But my main role was as analyst / programmer.

I'm not sure how that fits with the concept of ORM Framework as that is a term that I just looked up on google :)
Ima Wreckyou
The Conference Elite
The Conference
#6 - 2016-09-02 09:11:07 UTC
Maybe sqlite is what you are looking for.

From the website
"SQLite is a software library that implements a self-contained, serverless, zero-configuration, transactional SQL database engine"

Evil RatKid
voetius
Grundrisse
#7 - 2016-09-02 09:18:25 UTC

Thanks for pointing that out. I have SQLite and MySQL as my two most likely candidates for download and will pick one unless something that seems better comes along.

It's a bit of a hard choice for me for various reasons, maybe I'll just have to try both but I do like the look of SQLite.
Ima Wreckyou
The Conference Elite
The Conference
#8 - 2016-09-02 09:18:32 UTC
voetius wrote:
I'm not sure how that fits with the concept of ORM Framework as that is a term that I just looked up on google :)

An ORM framework is typically a library which abstracts the tables of an SQL database with classes in the language the ORM is for. Modern web frameworks use those to basically stay DB agnostic (every DB implements SQL in a different way) and also provide a lot more features on top of it, like automatic DB migrations (schema versioning), seeding, etc.

Evil RatKid
voetius
Grundrisse
#9 - 2016-09-02 09:37:04 UTC

Interesting. So to answer Violet. All the code that I wrote was not DB Agnostic and was non-portable. The Unidata / U2 products have a lot of modern features and did support a proprietary version of SQL ( UniSQL ) but would be better described as a legacy system.
Violet Hurst
Fedaya Recon
#10 - 2016-09-08 13:20:00 UTC
Ah, I see. UniSQL, wow, thanks for making me feel young. xD
To add to Ima's explanation, ORM frameworks also allow programmers to interact with databases without giving up their object-oriented way of thinking. They basically enable people without any knowledge of DBs to use them for persistance. That's why they came to mind, I didn't think of non-SQL databases.
Lucas Kell
Solitude Trading
S.N.O.T.
#11 - 2016-09-19 10:44:23 UTC  |  Edited by: Lucas Kell
Not the lightest of solutions but Microsoft do SQL Server Express and you can get management studio express to go with that. It's pretty quick and easy to install and set up. There is a lighter version of it for running on local machines so you dont; have to install the whole thing.

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