Simplest Way to Test ODBC on WIndows

Question

With unixODBC you can use a simple command line utility called "isql" to test your connection and permissions of some queries. Without having to write extra code or install libs is there a simple way to open up X data source send some sql commands and be done with it?

Answer 1

You can use the "Test Connection" feature after creating the ODBC connection through Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Data Sources.

To test a SQL command itself you could try (not used these myself):

http://www.sqledit.com/odbc/runner.html http://www.sqledit.com/sqlrun.zip

Or (perhaps easier and more useful in the long run) you can make a test ASP.NET or PHP page in a couple minutes to run SQL statement yourself through IIS.

Are you sure you need ODBC and not OLEDB? There is a easy example for a OLEDB .NET connection page here - http://www.w3schools.com/aspnet/aspnet_dbconnection.asp

Answer 2

For ad hoc queries, the ODBC Test utility is pretty handy. Its design and interface is more oriented toward testing various parts of the ODBC API. But it works quite nicely for running queries and showing the output. It is part of the Microsoft Data Access Components.

To run a query, you can click the connect button (or use ctrl-F), choose a data source, type a query, then ctrl-E to execute it and ctrl-R to display the results (e.g., if it is a SELECT or something that returns a cursor).