When comparing Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) vs SQLGate, the Slant community recommends SQLGate for most people. In the question“What are the best SQL Clients for Windows?” SQLGate is ranked 8th while Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) is ranked 9th. The most important reason people chose SQLGate is:
Functions; filter, sort and group on grid / Copy, past, sum and statistics functions like excel.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Can work for other databases if Linked Servers are used
Pro Great for SQL Server
Pro Quick data analysis
Functions; filter, sort and group on grid / Copy, past, sum and statistics functions like excel.
Pro Saves time with autocomplete & template functions
Pro Fast processing and easy customization
They put out weekly updates, so there are new and impressive functions being added pretty consistently.
Pro Supports cloud-based DB such as AWS & Azure
Pro Includes PL/SQL editor and debugger
Pro ER diagrams
Entity Relationship database diagrams limitations are: only supports reverse engineering, and can not export to formats other than .erd
Cons
Con Bloated
SSMS eats up a lot of disk space and memory, but Microsoft seems to have addressed the issue in the newest version, quote "The current size of the bundle is less than half of what SSMS 17.x is (~400 MB). The size will eventually grow a little when the IS components are added back to SSMS, but it should not be as large as it used to be."
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/ssms/sql-server-management-studio-changelog-ssms?view=sql-server-2017
Con Doesn't natively support other databases
SSMS is aimed at SQL Server.
Use of Linked Servers will give you some access to query other types of DBs using the tool, but this is a workaround.
Con Logon
The logon process after starting up the application is rather long winded (tested with PostgreSQL, no defaults shown for e.g. port number).
Con Free version is limited
e.g. only 10 tables allowed in ERD designer.