Database Manager for IIS 7 RC Preview

I recently had a chance to preview the Release Candidate of Database Manager 1.0 for IIS7. If you are looking for a very lightweight tool that is easy to install for doing basic operations against SQL Server used by your IIS applications, this tool is just for you. It’s much smaller than SQL Server 2008 Management Studio Express (SSMSE) – of course that means less features.

In what Database Manager lacks in features, it makes up with a simple query editor that will run your statements in the window as a batch. The query editor has simple colorization to point out keywords to catch obvious mistakes.

What makes Database Manager nice for developers is that it connects directly to your application’s database. This way you can focus on your project instead of seeing everything possible with the server like you get with SSMSE. You can connect to additional databases within their explorer.

As you can see, the explorer only shows Tables, Stored Procedures, and Views. If you want to create other objects, you’ll need to use the query editor.

Features include:

Add, rename, drop, and edit tables

View and manage primary keys, indexes and foreign keys

Data editing

Establish connections to multiple databases

Create and execute queries

Create, alter and delete stored procedures

Create, alter and delete views

Manage stored procedures

Manage both local and remote database from your machine

IIS 7.0 Manager provides remote management capabilities with a clean firewall-friendly option for managing a remote SQL Server

Exposes a public extensibility platform that enables the development of providers to support other databases

Compatible with SQL 2008 and 2005

If you are using IIS 7.0, I recommend the Database Manager for those times you want to test out your queries for your application or make tweaks to existing objects.

The IIS team has put together a nice set of tutorials and videos on their download site at https://www.iis.net/extensions/DatabaseManager

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