Since we run a firewalled network giving clients direct access to the MS SQL servers has always been a security issue.
With MySQL there are open source web frontends, such as PhpMyAdmin, that do a fantastic job at providing a web frontend to the database server. You don't need to be a hardcore DBA to manipulate your data, optimise or repair tables, take backups etc., etc.
But what about Microsoft SQL server?
While there are a couple of open source solutions out there none of them come even close to offering the levels of functionality needed.
So what could we do?
The solution lay in France with a little company called myLittleTools S.A.R.L..
They offer two web based products for MS SQL management:
- MyLittleAdmin - which allows you to control your database
- MyLittleBackup - which is a tool for managing backups and restores
This latest addition to our offerings goes well with our recent announcement of an increased number of databases with most of our ASP.net hosting plans (Windows 2003).
That's great to hear. Another handy alternative when creating a database from scratch is to first use SQLPluss using VWD Express 2005 and then use the SQL DataBase Publishing Toolkit to convert this to SQL.
Using a asp.net page to send the .sql output from this application to your server is then reasonably straight forward.
Read more about this at: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/04/19/update-of-sql-server-database-publishing-toolkit-for-web-hosting.aspx
This has got e around needing to directly access the Blacknight SQL server.
Thanks for this update. It's going to be very useful.