Hi, ssms is free here. I can think of other reasons to do this but i would like to install ssms on the desktops of a FEW users who already know, or have the aptitude to learn sql. and are willing to be limited to very small "governed" datsets.
We have excel sprawl from 2 directions.
One is from the rat's nests of links/lookups etc that were authored by a retiring generation of employees. And suddenly the folks who are inheriting those rat's nests are coming to us asking for help fixing/modifying etc.
The other is the budding mess that is starting and will eventually become the latter. I'm sure new sprouts are starting every day.
i am not comfortable taking the risk of fixing existing excel sprawl without first getting the users to work with me in reducing the mess they already have to simple sql modeling , fixing and then working with them in re entering the jungle. similarly, most of our users seem open to poc'ing their budding analytics in sql before taking what they learn to excel. in both scenarios, i can talk the users thru most of the work.
im not sure everybody agrees with me that ssms can be put in the hands of a few non IT employees. i feel like that is an old school way of thinking and ssms can be just a visual layer for folks getting back to basics or poc'ing new analytic paths.
does the community have any thoughts?
March 10, 2026 at 8:23 am
We have some trusted users who work with SSMS, otherwise they would flood the server creating reports without a way of canceling it.
Most of them prefer using excel powerquery for flexiblity, but Azure Data Studio (deprecated) / Visual Studio Code (SQL plugin) work fine. SSMS is not so widely used because it doesn't export data easily to excel/json/csv ... as the other applications do.
We don't have users who use databricks etc
As long as you're meeting compliance needs, sure, why not? I mean, I'd look to educate the heck out of them so they're not running wildly inefficient queries, cartesian joins and other horrors, but yeah, give people access to data. Makes sense.
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March 10, 2026 at 5:22 pm
thx Jo, couldnt they just as easily send sql into a tailspin from another client where they are coding their query? and do you find ssms that difficult in exporting to excel?
March 11, 2026 at 9:52 am
Stan, they can absolutely trash sql using another sql client like excel powerquery. If they are using SSMS/other client, you can see the application context (if they didn't modify it) and use the resource governor to reduce some dangers.
Personnally I find SSMS clumsy to export data compared to Azure Data Studio (choice between excel, json, csv, ...) .
SSMS copy paste with headers to Excel sometimes results in strange datatypes.
Export data results with SSMS ends up in some SSIS component getting run, with a big chance of failure
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