Microsoft has finally come up with a web administration interface for SQL server (as pointed out to me by our trusty developer, Travis, earlier today). I have these conflicting thoughts about the product (which is not unusual for me. Oh, and since it's free, is it really a product?)

First of all, it's about time they did something like this. Having to load a copy of Enterprise manager on every PC you want to work from is more than just a slight pain. It sucks. So, on that level, great news - It does a lot of the things you would commonly do in Enterprise Manager.

On the other hand, from the perspective of security and running secure apps on a business network, I have to say that when I read this, I get a little nervous:

There are two versions of the SQL Server Web Data Administrator Tool. One runs under IIS and the other runs under a Microsoft .NET open source web server named Cassini. For more information on Cassini and source code please go to...

Oh Boy. This should be interesting. At our company, we will need to test this and have the security guys look at it before we allow it to be used - especially considering the sensitivity of the data we deal with in SQL databases.

But, for working with non-critical data in SQL databases and doing some basic database administration, it's pretty sweet stuff.