Should There Be Ads in SSMS?
Some folks are seeing an ad at the top of their SSMS v22, like this one reported in the feedback site:
Today, Microsoft’s using this to test ads for an upcoming conference. Interesting that they give deeper discounts to Reddit readers as opposed to SSMS users, but I digress. Tomorrow, they might be pushing SQL Server 2025 upgrades, or Microsoft Fabric, or Copilot, or whatever.
Your first reaction is probably to say, “We’re paying massive amounts of SQL Server licensing money to Microsoft – get the spam out of SSMS.” And that would be fair, and I would certainly understand. After all, SQL Server Management Studio can only be used with paid products: SQL Server and Azure SQL DB. It’s not like SSMS connects to MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle, etc. So for me, right there, that means it shouldn’t be showing ads.
However, in today’s economy, even paying customers see ads these days. Every now and then, I’m forced to install a consumer version of Windows on someone’s laptop or desktop, and I’m horrified by how many ads are there, and I’m reminded of why I switched to Macs two decades ago. So set that one aside, and keep considering the discussion.
You think the question is, “Should SSMS have ads?” and the answers are “Yes” and “No.” In that world, sure, duh, everybody would choose “No.” However, that’s not really the right set of answer choices. Ads can bring in revenue, and when there’s revenue, that money could (theoretically) be used to fund development on the application.
The answer choices aren’t yes and no.
When a company like Microsoft asks, “Should SSMS have ads?” their answer choices look more like:
- Yes, put ads in SSMS, and every 3 months, Microsoft builds the current top-voted SSMS feature request, whatever it is
- No ads – but also no new features
That changes the discussion, doesn’t it? There are some pretty doggone cool feature requests out there, like easily exporting query results to Excel, clicking on column headers to sort the data client-side, keeping actual plans enabled for all tabs, and more. Wouldn’t it be cool to start getting more of those features delivered?
But the devil is in the details. Once SSMS ads go in place, Microsoft can say things like:
- “The SQLCon ad didn’t pay us much, but we’ve got a really good ad offer for boner pills, so we’re running that one.”
- “We decided to grow the ad size to 25% of SSMS’s screen real estate, and it’s an animated banner now.”
- “Sorry, this quarter’s ads didn’t perform well, so we can’t afford to dedicate enough dev time to build the top-voted feature because it’s too hard.”
- “While we wait for your query results, we’re going to play a video.”
- “We only get paid for the video completions, so we’re going to hold your query results until after the 15-second video completes.”
It’s a really slippery slope, and it goes downhill fast.
Once a vendor starts showing ads to users – especially paying users – they’ve already decided that they don’t value the user’s time or screen real estate. They will continue to make uglier and uglier decisions. They might justify the ads by saying they’ll need the money for feature development today, but never disclose what percentage of the revenue actually goes towards development – and they’ll revise that number down over time.
So should SSMS have ads? In a perfect world, where Microsoft discloses how much revenue those ads are bringing in, and makes a commitment to users about how much of the revenue will be spent on feature development – we could have a discussion.
But that ain’t the world we live in.
In this world, Microsoft as a company has long ago decided that even paying consumers should see ads. I think it’s probably a lost battle, but if you think there’s still a chance that we could keep ads out of SSMS, you can vote on the SSMS ad feedback item here.
43 Comments. Leave new
Just tried to vote — says the issue is closed.
Innnteresting.
It’s amazing how quickly they can close an issue when they don’t want the embarrassment of a ton of upvotes!
SSMS can be used with SQL Express for free.
Yes, it’s very common, so kind of a good reason to show ads.
But it would easy for MS to show ads only if you are using Express.
Ads interrupting our productivity?? My employer will not like that. Our network security admin will figure out how to block it!
The feedback item does show how to block it with group policy, but of course that only works for machines under group policies.
With respect, there’s another question you’re not asking which is entirely pertinent: _how many customers am I going to antagonize and LOSE with these ads?_
Microsoft has plenty of revenue. This isn’t about revenue at all. It’s about whether or not M$ wants to antagonize the developers that work with their products. In an increasingly competitive environment with more and more customers leaving SQL Server for PostGres or other options, why give them one more reason to defect?
Here’s another: are these ads a distraction to the developers which interfere with their ability to get their work done. YES. That’s a MAJOR concern to developers and businesses alike and you can bet that one of the first things they’ll do is figure out which port to block to stop these ads.
Which also leads to: Security. How many breaches to MS products have come because of Ads?
This is a REALLY bad idea all around. But that hasn’t stopped M$ before from doing really stupid things.
I can only ask so many questions per blog post. 😉
I’m waiting for the “watch this short video advertisement to execute your query” pop up. 😉
I chuckled a lot while writing that one.
Brent… You are DBA but I’m a developer. SSMS as well as Visual Studio are crappy tools for developing SQL code. Much of even your wonderful SQL scripts are still rooted in the way we developers thought 40 years ago and not geared towards newer developer technologies and multicore processors.
I have written my own tools for SQL development and only use SSMS for development when I haven’t developed my own tool year. My favorite developer tool that I wrote takes existing SQL code and provides me examples on where and how tables and columns are used. I can pick columns and tables and come up with base query templates even getting more complex queries involving aggregation and windowing functions. I can even get now come up with pretty good ideas of what the execution plan will be for any given query without being connect to the database or actually executing a query.
I’d be super interested in those tools. There might be money for you to make there, if they’re good enough.
They are a money maker… I am going through a medical condition but I am currently apply for a patent for one of them. (Lost the ability to speak – Coughing from COVID caused a larynx issue)
The issue I always get thrown into is I am not fixing a top 10 issue but hundreds or thousands of issues. I have to come up to speed before I am even done with HR paperwork and I have grown tired of that. Brent’s great SQL scripts are great but they are too slow in you want to learn a database and fix massive amount of problems quickly. I can tell you not only where every table and column is being used but what clause in the SQL statement it is being used in. I can also tell you not only where a SQL problem is occurring once found in the Query Store or Procedure Cache but bring up the code in an editor. Permit you to actual query examples of columns and tables and see examples. That gives me examples which is especially useful if those query examples are in Programmability rather than Query Store.
I have C# code that replaces SqlCommand in development code that finds bad queries in ADO code. It’s great because I can find the problem where is happening and I can create “Change Request”s to fix whenever a developer is working on that particular file or create a “Low Hanging Fruit” basket for developers if they finish their assigned tasks early on any given sprint. One of the biggest problems I have seen over the past 30 years is having DBAs trying to get involved with development as most couldn’t write a “Hello World” application if their lives depended on it. You want to catch bad SQL before the code goes to QA and Peer Reviews don’t check on query performance. I have a replacement SqlCommand this does something similar to what Brent Ozar does with sp_Blitz but a peer reviewer for embedded SQL.
Wayne – OK, cool, but that’s pretty far outside the scope of this blog post.
As was said previously, the option to vote has been closed and “fixed” with this functionality apparently being optionally disabled.
I don’t like the fix they have “released”, which in short is “hack the registry.” Yes, you can do this via Group Policy, but that is still hacking the registry en masse.
This should, at a minimum, be a simple application option or preference. SSMS is free to download and install, but as you said, it only works with a single product line offered by one vendor. One could argue that it connects to Azure or Fabric or whatever, but they are all the same thing, SQL Server distributions.
No ads. Not for what we currently pay per license.
Agreed. We pay extortionate amount of money to MS already. I’m already furious with the clutter and crap they insert on my PC and in my browsers, this is just another example.
Agreed about the option or preference.
Agreed. Alternatively, they could do it the other way around so a registry hack is needed if you really want to see the ads (at least if you are a paying customer)
Looking at this issue and basically saying “well, it’s not like we have a choice on the matter… It is what it is.”, which is what Brent basically did in his article – that right there is the reason why these mega corporations keep fleecing us from our money while simultaneously force-feeding us ads and slop. It’s because of that kind of submissive attitude that they keep getting away with it.
No, we should not accept ads for a paid product like SSMS (technically, it is a paid product like Brent said, even though it’s free on its own), nor should we accept seeing ads on ANY paid product anywhere, ever, of any kind.
Our acceptance for ads is not the thing that needs to change. What needs to change is the corporations’ capitulations to stock market shareholders who only want the pie to get bigger and bigger, instead of increasing their employees’ salaries.
In theory, I agree. In practice, it feels like it’s going to be pretty tough to fight capitalism.
if the ads cause distraction resulting in lower productivity, then SSMS is not free anymore. The cost just isn’t reflected on the P&L or the cash flow statement.
Funny how the good feature requests you listed already exist in JetBrains DataGrip. Add in DataSpell and you have some real power. There are some things I have to use SSMS for but when a JetBrains tool can do the job, that’s where you will find me. Oh, and the JetBrains tools run on my Mac, Windows, and Linux machines.
Employee productively is already greatly distracted and non-productive. Sounds like an excellent opportunity for a vendor to make money at the cost of customer lost revenue.
There are definitely quite a few paid third party alternatives to SSMS of varying quality, but in most companies, it’s pretty hard to justify paying money for those when SSMS is free.
I’ve tried some, but when working with SQL Server SSMS is still king.
This conf ads are everywhere including SSMS
one of the reasons I am not going
Voting was already closed when I got there. I still don’t like it. It was enough of a distraction to briefly break my train of thought. Very annoying.
I don’t really have a good solution here, just a funny clip from a favorite movie. “Ready Player one”
https://youtu.be/KpPE85Jogjw?si=5yggPDVf_zd56Nfi&t=18
HAHAHA
I am slightly on the fence on this one. When you start Visual Studio there is (or used to be) a feed of content from Microsoft that does contain blog posts and routinely advertises conferences and events.
I don’t mind this as long as it is limited to events for Microsoft, or if it were SQL events.
I definitely wouldn’t want to see advertising for products or services.
I don’t like “slippery slope” arguments, but this would definitely sink into one – if we allowed certain types of advertisement, how long before I have to click an ad for an hour of query bucks. Kind of kidding, but in the Black Mirror episode of this, that’s where we’re headed.
Andrew – I’m with you in that I’m on the fence too. I’m completely okay with it as long as there’s an easy dismiss and dismiss-permanently button next to the ad, because sometimes, on some platforms, the ads are actually great. It’s all about how the ads are curated.
For example, my Instagram ad feed is FANTASTIC, and I’ve bought a ton of stuff from it. They’ve done a really good job of personalizing the ads to fit my taste.
Bloody hell, is it April 1st already?
None of this can be true – the adverts or the reasoning.
No.
There are similar ads in the Power BI / Fabric service. And recently in Azure Data Factory as well (well, not really an ad, but a suggestion to try the migration assistant to move ADF to Fabric, so that might count as an ad for Fabric), and you cannot click that one away!
Less ads on Mac?
After 1 year of iPhone 16 I’m switching back to Android.
Apps like this (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/giallozafferano-le-ricette/id384387249) have 30 seconds ads on iOS and 5 seconds ads on Android.
AdSense knows you are sticking with Apple and you can eat 30 seconds ads.
But not me, having tried both I’m going back to Android after only 1 year.
That’s an app, chief, not the OS. Stay with me here.
[…] Should There Be Ads in SSMS? (Brent Ozar) […]
Apparently, Erin Stellato from Microsoft closed the issue saying “We have released a fix for this issue! We made an update to the current information banner so that it can be disabled using a feedback group policy (specifically SurveysDisabled). This will not affect any users in an organization that already have seen the current banner, but for those that have not, they will not see it. Thank you for providing valuable feedback to help improve the product.”
Glad it’s “fixed”, I’m not in favor of any ads because of the slippery slope you mentioned Brent. I’m also the type to use a pihole to block as many ads as possible.
Yikes with the “query execution wait until you’ve watched this video” option; we laugh, but is it really that far away?
Maybe for $100/core more in licensing we can stay “ad-free” … hah.
I agree with MS looking at options to get revenue from developer features they are putting into SSMS that aren’t being funded by anything. SSMS is first an administration tool, as an administration tool they can fund administration features for SQL servers, and the development features requested don’t have a source of funding coming from anything.
Personally I could not care less about development features popularly requested. Even if some of the popular requested dev features, SSMS still won’t be good enough to replace SSDT (or whatever they are calling it this year) so I am still going to be doing development in SSDT anyways. I wish they would spend some time on SSDT to bring it forward at least 15 years and if they aren’t going to do that, bring SSMS up to better parity with SSDT and have a separate edition that can be paid for instead of having advertisements to gain access to new features. I certainly will not say that I like working with SSDT, its clunky, has a lot of overhead and it and for deployments it is so terrible we have to copy and paste code to roll our own deployment packages.
MS tried the route of going to community supported SQL development tools in azure data studio and VS code, and they failed. If they are going to have to do it themselves, money has to come from somewhere.
Just in case Microsoft read feedback anywhere that is open to responses, we pay enough for SQL Server already, SSMS should be a fully supported and developed tool and should not need any additional revenue generation.
I thank that if ads are annoying enough, people will just stop upgrading to that and newer version of SSMS.
I honestly did think about putting a link for both versions on SQLServerUpdates.com.
Kind of like YouTube saying to advertisers: “Give us money and we will show your ads to users.” Then to users: “Give us money to NOT see the ads.”