In one of the previous article, I have mentioned how to Download and Install SQL Server (Step by Step procedure) and but once we have installed SQL Server, we will need to download and install SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) also, to view database and query from SQL Server database using SSMS is really simply and easy. SQL Server management studio (SSMS) is free to use and SQL Express is free to use for developer.
SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) is an integrated environment for managing any SQL infrastructure. Use SSMS to access, configure, manage, administer, and develop all components of SQL Server, Azure SQL Database, and SQL Data Warehouse.
Is SQL Server Management Studio Free?
YES, SSMS is free is a free tool by Microsoft to query SQL Server database, hosted locally or on Azure or AWS Servers.
Download and install SSMS step by step
So let's take a look on how we can install SSMS locally
Step 1: Download SQL Server Management Studio "SSMS-Setup-ENU.exe" file from given link.
Step 2: Once the file is downloaded, locate it on your Hard drive or SSD and double-click on it, to install it, you will see screen like below
Click on "Install" and Once you will click install, you will see output like below
basically, as you can see from above image, SSMS is being installed here.
Step 3: Once installation process is complete, you can click on "Close" button
That's it, now we have installed SSMS on our system.
Connect to database using SSMS
Once download and install of SSMS is done, you can search it in programs and then open it, you will see output like below
Basically, in the above image, we can see we have few options, let's understand them
- Server type: Since, we will be working on "Database Engine", so we can keep Server-type, same.
- Server Name: Now, this can be Server-Name of you AWS RDS Server or your local Server or Azure RDS Server, here in the above image, I am using local SQL Server Express version (DESKTOP-DOG5T0Q\SQLEXPRESS), which is already installed on my system, so using it. Name of the local Server, is usually different on each PC.
If you have SQL Server installed, it will automatically show you here once SSMS is opened. - Authentication: Here, we will select mode of Authentication of SQL Server, if it is Windows Authentication, then we don't need to enter username/password, else if select "SQL Server Authentication", you will need to enter username/password, which you had created while installing SQL Server.
- Username/password: As mentioned above, if we have installed SQL Server in Mixed Mode, then you can select Authentication as "SQL Server Authentication" and then enter username/password created during SQL Server installtion process.
We will use Windows Authentication for now, once we will click on next, it will connect to local database engine and then you can see output like below
That's it, as you can see in the above image, we can see all the already created database.
If you are not able to see any database, you need to create one or you can download and restore sample AdventureWorks database or create new database using SSMS.
You may also like to read:
SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) Versions
How to Create database in sql server management studio (Create table and Insert data)
Download AdventureWorks Database and Restore in SQL server (Step by Step)
Restore (Import) database from .bak file in SQL server (With & without scripts)
Connect to SQL Server using C# in Console Application
Is SQL Server management studio free?
Convert Month Number to Month Name in SQL
Delete (Drop) Database in SQL Server
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