Here I’ll show you how to get SQL Server up and running on your Mac in less than half an hour. And the best part is, you’ll have SQL Server running locally without needing any virtualization software.

Universal Database Tool Free multi-platform database tool for developers, database administrators, analysts and all people who need to work with databases. Supports all popular databases: MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, Sybase, MS Access, Teradata, Firebird, Apache Hive, Phoenix, Presto, etc. DBeaver: A Universal Database Tool. It is a free multi-platform database tool for developers, SQL programmers, database administrators and analysts. Supports all popular databases: MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, Sybase, Teradata, MongoDB, Cassandra, Redis, etc; Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio: An integrated environment for managing any SQL. In this topic, you connect to your DB instance by using either Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) or SQL Workbench/J. For an example that walks you through the process of creating and connecting to a sample DB instance, see Creating a Microsoft SQL Server DB instance and connecting to it.

Prior to SQL Server 2017, if you wanted to run SQL Server on your Mac, you first had to create a virtual machine (using VirtualBox, Parallels Desktop, VMware Fusion, or Bootcamp), then install Windows onto that VM, then finally SQL Server. This is still a valid option depending on your requirements (here’s how to install SQL Server on a Mac with VirtualBox if you’d like to try that method).

Starting with SQL Server 2017, you can now install SQL Server directly on to a Linux machine. And because macOS is Unix based (and Linux is Unix based), you can run SQL Server for Linux on your Mac. The way to do this is to run SQL Server on Docker.

So let’s go ahead and install Docker. Then we’ll download and install SQL Server.

1. Install Docker

   Download the (free) Docker Community Edition for Mac (unless you’ve already got it installed on your system). This will enable you to run SQL Server from within a Docker container.

   To download, visit the Docker CE for Mac download page and click Get Docker.

   To install, double-click on the .dmg file and then drag the Docker.app icon to your Application folder.

   What is Docker?

   Docker is a platform that enables software to run in its own isolated environment. SQL Server (from 2017) can be run on Docker in its own isolated container. Once Docker is installed, you simply download — or “pull” — the SQL Server on Linux Docker Image to your Mac, then run it as a Docker container. This container is an isolated environment that contains everything SQL Server needs to run.

2. Launch Docker

   Launch Docker the same way you’d launch any other application (eg, via the Applications folder, the Launchpad, etc).

   When you open Docker, you might be prompted for your password so that Docker can install its networking components and links to the Docker apps. Go ahead and provide your password, as Docker needs this to run.

3. Increase the Memory (optional)

   By default, Docker will have 2GB of memory allocated to it. SQL Server needs at least 2GB. However, it won’t hurt to increase it if you can.

   In my case, I increased it to 4GB.

   To do this, select Preferences from the little Docker icon in the top menu:

   Then finish off by clicking Apply & Restart

4. Download SQL Server

   Now that Docker is installed, we can download and install SQL Server for Linux.

   Open a Terminal window and run the following command.

   This downloads the latest SQL Server 2019 for Linux Docker image to your computer.

   You can also check for the latest container version on the Docker website if you wish.

5. Launch the Docker Image

   Run the following command to launch an instance of the Docker image you just downloaded:

   But of course, use your own name and password. Also, if you downloaded a different Docker image, replace mcr.microsoft.com/mssql/server:2019-latest with the one you downloaded.

   Here’s an explanation of the parameters:

   -d	This optional parameter launches the Docker container in daemon mode. This means that it runs in the background and doesn’t need its own Terminal window open. You can omit this parameter to have the container run in its own Terminal window.
   --name sql_server_demo	Another optional parameter. This parameter allows you to name the container. This can be handy when stopping and starting your container from the Terminal.
   -e 'ACCEPT_EULA=Y'	The Y shows that you agree with the EULA (End User Licence Agreement). This is required in order to have SQL Server for Linux run on your Mac.
   -e 'SA_PASSWORD=reallyStrongPwd123'	Required parameter that sets the sa database password.
   -p 1433:1433	This maps the local port 1433 to port 1433 on the container. This is the default TCP port that SQL Server uses to listen for connections.
   mcr.microsoft.com/mssql/server:2019-latest	This tells Docker which image to use. If you downloaded a different one, use it instead.

   Password Strength

   If you get the following error at this step, try again, but with a stronger password.

   I received this error when using reallyStrongPwd as the password (but of course, it’s not a really strong password!). I was able to overcome this by adding some numbers to the end. However, if it wasn’t just a demo I’d definitely make it stronger than a few dictionary words and numbers.

6. Check the Docker container (optional)

   You can type the following command to check that the Docker container is running.

   If it’s up and running, it should return something like this:

7. Install sql-cli (unless already installed)

   Run the following command to install the sql-cli command line tool. This tool allows you to run queries and other commands against your SQL Server instance.

   This assumes you have NodeJs installed. If you don’t, download it from Nodejs.org first. Installing NodeJs will automatically install npm which is what we use in this command to install sql-cli.

   Permissions Error?

   If you get an error, and part of it reads something like Please try running this command again as root/Administrator, try again, but this time prepend sudo to your command:

8. Connect to SQL Server

   Now that sql-cli is installed, we can start working with SQL Server via the Terminal window on our Mac.

   Connect to SQL Server using the mssql command, followed by the username and password parameters.

   You should see something like this:

   This means you’ve successfully connected to your instance of SQL Server.

9. Run a Quick Test

   Run a quick test to check that SQL Server is up and running and you can query it.

   For example, you can run the following command to see which version of SQL Server your running:

   If it’s running, you should see something like this (but of course, this will depend on which version you’re running):

   If you see a message like this, congratulations — SQL Server is now up and running on your Mac!

A SQL Server GUI for your Mac – Azure Data Studio

Azure Data Studio (formerly SQL Operations Studio) is a free GUI management tool that you can use to manage SQL Server on your Mac. You can use it to create and manage databases, write queries, backup and restore databases, and more.

Azure Data Studio is available on Windows, Mac and Linux.

Here are some articles/tutorials I’ve written for Azure Data Studio:

Another Free SQL Server GUI – DBeaver

Another SQL Server GUI tool that you can use on your Mac (and Windows/Linux/Solaris) is DBeaver.

DBeaver is a free, open source database management tool that can be used on most database management systems (such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, SQLite, Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, Sybase, Microsoft Access, Teradata, Firebird, Derby, and more).

I wrote a little introduction to DBeaver, or you can go straight to the DBeaver download page and try it out with your new SQL Server installation.

Limitations of SQL Server for Linux/Mac

SQL Server for Linux does have some limitations when compared to the Windows editions (although this could change over time). The Linux release doesn’t include many of the extra services that are available in the Windows release, such as Analysis Services, Reporting Services, etc. Here’s a list of what’s available and what’s not on SQL Server 2017 for Linux and here’s Microsoft’s list of Editions and supported features of SQL Server 2019 on Linux.

Another limitation is that SQL Server Management Studio is not available on Mac or Linux. SSMS a full-blown GUI management for SQL Server, and it provides many more features than Azure Data Studio and DBeaver (at least at the time of writing). You can still use SSMS on a Windows machine to connect to SQL Server on a Linux or Mac machine, but you just can’t install it locally on the Linux or Mac machine.

If you need any of the features not supported in SQL Server for Linux, you’ll need SQL Server for Windows. However, you can still run SQL Server for Windows on your Mac by using virtualization software. Here’s how to install SQL Server for Windows on a Mac using VirtualBox.

DBeaver Overview

Dbeaver Microsoft Sql Server Driver

DBeaver is a free, open source multiplatform database management tool and SQL client for developers and database administrators. DBeaver can be used to access any database or cloud application that has an ODBC or JDBC driver, such as Oracle, SQL Server, MySQl, Salesforce, or MailChimp. Devart DBeaver provides you with the most important features you'd need when working with a database in a GUI tool, such as:

• SQL queries execution
• Metadata browsing and editing
• SQL scripts management
• Data export/import
• Data backup
• DDL generation
• ER diagrams rendering
• Test data generation
• BLOB/CLOB support
• Database objects browsing
• Scrollable resultsets

The tool comes in two editions — Community and Enterprise. Enterprise Edition supports NoSQL databases, such as MongoDB or Cassandra, persistent query manager database, SSH tunneling, vector graphics (SVG) and a few other enterprise-level features. Note though that you can access a MongoDB database from DBeaver Community Edition using the respective Devart ODBC driver. For the purposes of this guide, we'll use the Community Edition of DBeaver to retrieve data from SQL Server via the Open Database Connectivity driver.

Creating an ODBC Data Source to Use SQL Server Data in DBeaver

1. Click the Start menu and select Control Panel.
2. Select Administrative Tools, then click ODBC Data Sources.
3. Click on the System DSN tab if you want to set up a DSN name for all users of the system or select User DSN to configure DSN only for your account.
4. Click the Add button and double-click Devart ODBC Driver for SQL Server in the list.
5. Give a name to your data source and set up the connection parameters.
6. Click the Test Connection button to verify that you have properly configured the DSN.

When using ODBC driver for SQL Server with DBeaver, SQL_WVARCHAR data types may be displayed incorrectly in DBeaver. To prevent this, you need to set the string data types to Ansi either in the Advanced Settings tab of the driver configuration dialog or directly in the connection string (String Types=Ansi) — all string types will be returned as SQL_CHAR, SQL_VARCHAR and SQL_LONGVARCHAR.

Microsoft Sql Server Driver For Dbeaver

Connecting to SQL Server Data from DBeaver via ODBC Driver for SQL Server

Follow the steps below to establish a connection to SQL Server in DBeaver.

1. In the Database menu, select New Database Connection.
2. In the Connect to database wizard, select ODBC and click Next.
3. Enter the previously configured DSN in the Database/Schema field.
4. Click Test Connection. If everything goes well, you'll see the Success message.

Viewing SQL Server Database Objects and Querying Data

Microsoft Sql Server Free Download

You can expand out the database structure in DBeaver's Database Navigator to visualize all the tables in SQL Server database. To view and edit the data in a table, you need to right-click on the target table name and select View data.The content of the table will be displayed in the main workspace.

If you want to write a custom SQL query that will include only the necessary columns from the table, you can select New SQL Editor in the SQL Editor main menu. Create your query and run it by clicking Execute SQL Statement to view the results in the same window.

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