tabularis-sqlserver-plugin

A Microsoft SQL Server plugin for Tabularis, the lightweight database management tool.

This plugin enables Tabularis to connect to SQL Server instances, providing schema introspection, query execution, full CRUD, DDL, trigger and stored-routine management, and visual execution plans through a JSON-RPC 2.0 over stdio interface. It is written in Rust on top of tiberius with deadpool connection pooling.

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Table of Contents

• Features
• Connection Configuration
• Supported Data Types
• Installation
• Known Limitations
• Building from Source
• Development
• Credits
• License

Features

• Stable tiberius + deadpool connection pooling with session reset (sp_reset_connection), startup scripts, and pool lifecycle handling
• Schema, table, column, PK/FK, index, view, routine, and trigger introspection
• Query execution with pagination, CTE/DML classification, multiple result sets, and session-preserving batches
• Accurate affected rows, including multi-statement DML and DML OUTPUT
• INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE with composite primary keys and safe IDENTITY_INSERT recovery
• Table/view/index/foreign-key DDL and safe ALTER COLUMN generation
• Trigger creation, editing, and removal
• Procedure/function management, typed OUT/INOUT variables, and table-valued functions
• Static and runtime execution plans through SHOWPLAN_XML / STATISTICS XML, rendered in Tabularis's Visual EXPLAIN
• JavaScript-safe BIGINT extraction and broad SQL Server type handling

Connection Configuration

Parameter	Default	Notes
Host	localhost
Port	1433
Username	sa	SQL authentication only
Password	—
Database	—	The database the pool connects to
Startup script	—	SQL run on every new pooled connection (e.g. SET options)

TLS modes

The standard Tabularis ssl_mode values map onto the TDS encryption policy:

Mode	Behaviour
disable	Encryption off
prefer (default)	Encrypted, server certificate accepted
require	Encryption required, server certificate accepted
verify-full	Encryption required, certificate and hostname verified against the system trust store
verify-ca	Rejected — use verify-full

Custom CA files and client certificates are rejected explicitly; strict verification uses the system trust store.

Supported Data Types

All common SQL Server types are supported for column creation and value extraction, including exact/approximate numerics (TINYINT … BIGINT, DECIMAL, MONEY, FLOAT), strings (CHAR/VARCHAR/NVARCHAR incl. MAX, TEXT/NTEXT), binary (BINARY/VARBINARY/IMAGE), date/time (DATE, TIME, DATETIME, DATETIME2, SMALLDATETIME, DATETIMEOFFSET), BIT, UNIQUEIDENTIFIER, XML, SQL_VARIANT, ROWVERSION, HIERARCHYID, and spatial (GEOGRAPHY, GEOMETRY).

BIGINT values outside JavaScript's safe integer range are delivered as strings so they round-trip without precision loss.

Installation

Automatic (via Tabularis)

Open Settings → Plugins in Tabularis and install SQL Server from the plugin registry.

Manual Installation

1. Download the ZIP for your platform from the releases page.
2. Extract it into the Tabularis plugins directory:
   • Linux: ~/.local/share/tabularis/plugins/sqlserver/
   • macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/com.debba.tabularis/plugins/sqlserver/
   • Windows: %APPDATA%\debba\tabularis\data\plugins\sqlserver\
3. On Linux/macOS, make the binary executable: chmod +x sqlserver-plugin
4. Restart Tabularis — SQL Server appears in the connection picker.

Known Limitations

• SQL authentication only; Azure AD and Windows Integrated Authentication are follow-up work.
• Primary-key membership changes are disabled: the single-column alteration API cannot safely preserve composite PKs and referencing foreign keys.
• Custom CA files are rejected explicitly; strict verification uses the system trust store.

Building from Source

Prerequisites

• Rust (stable, see rust-toolchain.toml)
• just (optional, wraps the common cargo invocations)

Build

just build      # debug build
just release    # release build (what the GitHub Actions workflow ships)

Install Locally

just dev-install   # build + copy binary and manifest into the Tabularis plugins dir
just uninstall     # remove the installed plugin

Development

Testing the Plugin

Unit tests need no database:

just test
just lint
just fmt

You can drive the plugin directly over stdio:

echo '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"get_create_table_sql","params":{"table_name":"users","schema":"dbo","columns":[{"name":"id","data_type":"INT","is_nullable":false,"is_pk":true,"is_auto_increment":true,"default_value":null}]},"id":1}' \
  | ./target/debug/sqlserver-plugin

or use the interactive REPL:

just repl

Setting Up a Local SQL Server

just run-sqlserver    # SQL Server 2022 in Docker (sa / Str0ng!Passw0rd)
just seed-sqlserver   # create and seed the tabularis_test database

Credits

The SQL Server driver implementation was contributed by Fabio Malpezzi, originally developed as a built-in Tabularis driver and adapted here to the plugin architecture.

License

Apache-2.0 — see LICENSE.