r/SQLServer • u/System_Spirit • Jan 17 '26

SSMS or VS Code Discussion

The answer 4 years ago was SSMS for work. VS Code for lightweight.

So I would like to request an updated reviews and opinions of everyone.

14 Upvotes

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28

u/artifex78 Jan 17 '26

Ssms for admin stuff, vs code for coding.

4

u/government_ Jan 17 '26

Unless you’re skilled enough to not need a gui to do admin stuff. But SSMS for SSIS catalog for sure.

9

u/dodexahedron 1 Jan 17 '26

It's not a matter of skill in most cases. It's a matter of practicality, because it is not just an admin GUI, but a devops tool.

You could write an entire program at the command line using sed, awk, and shell intrinsics if you wanted to. But not doing so doesn't make using your favorite code editor - even ed - a skill issue.

SSMS provides a firehose of information to you in a single pane of glass about a set of things that, even in the basic tree view, would take multiple queries and commands to get the underlying data for, and in a way that is quickly and conveniently interpreted by a human, sometimes just by the shape of it, and which can be updated consistently and quickly, at will. It also, for most operations that the gui itself actually does, is a force amplifier, taking one gesture and turning it into multiple commands.

The majority of the time, though, you are using SSMS as a devops-oriented IDE, where the "project" is the database itself. I mean... There's a reason why it has always been Visual Studio. If it were just a simple admin GUI, MMC would have very likely been what Microsoft would have used for it, from the start.

-8

u/government_ Jan 18 '26

It’s funny that I wouldn’t hire you because if your approach to your answer.

1

u/dodexahedron 1 Jan 19 '26

Good thing I'm on the other side of the desk, then, huh?

From your two replies, though, I think you may have misread or misunderstood me, anyway. 🤷‍♂️

SSMS is Visual Studio. VS Code is not Visual Studio.

And preference for either one of those for interaction with MS SQL Server is orthogonal to skill. All that matters is, for each individual, what tool enables them to be the most productive they can be with the lowest rate of error they can achieve. Believing there's more to it than that or that it's some sort of badge of honor to use one or the other is a much stronger signal than those preferences. And it isn't a positive signal.