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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-13T08:04:37+00:00

Our centralized IT department has suggested two primary ad hoc query tools for our

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Our centralized IT department has suggested two primary ad hoc query tools for our general user base of approximately 200 staff members:

  1. Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio 2008 (SSMS)

  2. Microsoft Access 2003

Environment

  • The backend database is a read-only Microsoft SQL Server 2005 database.

  • The schema is 400+ tables; allowing access to the raw data for our general staff would be a disaster.

  • We will be building an “abstraction layer” over the raw data for our general staff to run ad hoc queries against.

  • The abstraction layer will most likely contain a number of views.

  • A number of users have basic knowledge in Microsoft Access; none have used SSMS.

Which of the above tools (or alternative) would be best for a decidedly non-techie user base of approximately 200 people? What are the pros and cons of each?

Also, the IT department has suggested teaching people T-SQL so they may use SSMS. Is this reasonable?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Your “abstraction layer” is the right approach to take with Access. Create an MDB with the basic views required linked into it and distribute to the users. Allow them to create new queries and reports in their own MDB as required.

    Now how you are going to stop them from running a Cartesian join on tables with a million records or more I’m not quite sure.

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