End User Ad-Hoc Reporting Tool: Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio or Microsoft Access?

Posted by schultkl on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by schultkl
Published on 2009-12-04T20:11:48Z Indexed on 2010/06/12 8:42 UTC
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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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