Product: SQL Mesh Personal v1.5b
Publisher:SQL Mesh
Price: Free
Introduction
Searching your database objects in your databases has become a must for you if you are database developer or database administrator. For example, you are searching for all objects containing customerID these could be tables,views,stored procedures or triggers. There is no native support in SQL Server for searching objects. There are a few third party tools in the market. Most of these tools are not free, however, SQL Mesh has recently released a product which you can download and use for free.
Installation and Configuration
Installation and configuration is extremely simple. Download it from the site, unzip it and execute it. There is no need for an installation for this product. You need to have jre v1.5 or higher which you can download it from http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp. As this is a java tool, all operating systems are supported.
Features Tested
After extracting the zip file there is a bat file named run_sqlmesh which you have to click. This is a SQL Mesh service. Then you have to type http://localhost:20212/azurestream/sqlmesh/admin url in Internet browser address bar. I have used IE 6.0 for this review. After typing above url, you will be taken to the page shown below:
First, you need to provide a server name. In case of SQL Server Authentication, you need to provide a login name and password, and in case of Windows Authentication you need to provide a Windows Domain. The default port for the SQL Server is 1433 but can provide the port of your SQL Server.
Next, select the database of your choice. Currently there are five options available. They are MS SQL 6.5, MS SQL 7.0 , MS SQL 2000+, Sybase 10 and Sybase 11.5+. I have done this review on SQL Server 2005. So I selected the MS SQL 2000+ option.
Next, select objects that you want to search. As per this release four objects are available – columns, stored procedures, triggers and views. After providing this information click the Parse Server button.
The service screen shows your objects being built.
After running this, close the service and restart again before going to the search page to execute your search.
You will need to enter a string that you are going to search for, the server and the object(s) to be searched. Unfortunately there is no option for selecting multiple databases.
Here you have the option of selecting object types and more importantly the database you need.
Below is the search results screen you will be taken to:
The most important feature of this tool is the ability to access this all from a web interface. Hence, you can perform the configuration centrally and allow multiple users to access it via http.
Improvements
As this tool only has limited features there are plenty of improvements that could be made. However, I need to stress the point that this a free tool.
It would be better if there was an option to select multiple databases to be searched. Currently, all the databases’ objects are generated – if you have lot of databases it will take some time to generate those objects, even 15-30 minutes.
Whenever you have a new database you will need to parse the server, which is time consuming. It would be better to have an online searching method or else the user should have the option of scheduling the parsing of the server.
Recommendation
Even though there are only few options available with SQL Mesh, for a free tool it is a very useful addition to the developer or DBA’s toolbox. SQLMesh can be downloaded at http://www.sqlmesh.com/downloads/sqlmesh-pe.zip.
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