gossms

README

Manage SQL Server without leaving macOS or Linux

goSSMS

SQL Server Management Studio clone for MacOS, Linux and Windows.

goSSMS is a cross-platform, terminal-based SQL Server Management Studio clone written in Go. No GUI, no X11, no CGO, no installation — a single executable that runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows with no SQL client tools or drivers required.

Features

• Object Explorer — browse servers, databases, tables, views, procedures, functions, triggers, sequences, synonyms, and security objects in a tree matching SSMS's layout, including system databases/objects grouped separately. Drag a node into a query editor to insert its (schema-qualified) name. Right-click for context actions, or take a database offline/online.
• Multiple query panels — open as many T-SQL editor + results tabs as you need. Scripts split on GO batches sharing one connection, each result set gets its own tab, and a Messages tab collects PRINT output, row counts, and errors. Results are never row-capped — every row a query returns is shown, so a large enough result set is limited only by available memory. The toolbar's Meta toggle (also Query > Output Column Metadata) adds each result set's columns and their declared types to the Messages tab.
• SQL editor — syntax highlighting, word-wrap, line duplicate/move/ indent/comment, undo/redo, and smart statement selection for running just the statement under the cursor. Find and Replace (Ctrl+F) with match case, whole word, regular expressions, and Replace All confined to the selection. Block (column) selection you can type into, and that pastes back rectangularly; double-click selects a word.
• IntelliSense — autocompletes schemas, tables, views, and columns as you type, understands table aliases and multi-statement scripts, and can be toggled off in Options.
• Execution Plan Viewer — view estimated or actual execution plans as a cost-weighted operator graph, an expandable tree, or syntax-highlighted raw XML.
• Cell values worth reading get a real view — "Show Value" on an XML or JSON result cell opens it in its own syntax-highlighted panel instead of a narrow popup.
• Properties dialogs — multi-page, editable SSMS-style Properties for Server, Database, Login, Table, Schema, Server Role, Database Role, Database User, Index/Statistics, Key, and Foreign Key, plus New Database / New Login dialogs for creating objects from scratch.
• Permissions editing — every permissions and securables grid cycles Grant → Grant With Grant → Deny → (none) with the right WITH GRANT OPTION / CASCADE / GRANT OPTION FOR statement issued for each transition, plus per-column grants on a table or view, filter boxes on the long grids, and an Effective Permissions page on Login and Database User Properties resolving what that principal can actually do once roles, ownership and inherited scopes are applied.
• SQL Server Agent — browse and manage Jobs, Schedules, Alerts, and Operators; multi-page Job Properties (steps, schedules, alerts, notifications, history), run/stop a job, and view its run history.
• Backup & Restore — full option dialogs (destination, type, media, compression, point-in-time restore) running as cancellable background tasks with live progress.
• Full authentication support via gosmo: SQL Server Authentication, Windows Integrated Authentication, and Azure Entra ID (Default, Password, MSI, Service Principal, Interactive, Device Code, Azure CLI).
• Script objects — script any table/view/procedure/function as CREATE or DROP into a new query window.
• Object Dependencies — see what an object depends on and what depends on it.
• Activity Monitor — History and Sample dashboards over live DMV data: batches/transactions/compiles, wait categories, memory composition and cache ratios, page activity, database I/O latency, log flushes, and checkpoints. Charts scroll on both axes, the refresh rate is selectable (2/3/5/10 s), and collection can be paused. Clicking a chart pins a readout that follows the sample it names across the plot and closes itself when that sample scrolls off. Thirty minutes of history is kept in memory and nothing is persisted. The TempDB tab tracks tempdb space, temp tables and the version store on its own slower schedule. The Block and Sessions tabs each show one run of a stored procedure in a full result grid — Block the current blocking chains, Sessions everything currently running. Neither refreshes on a timer: they run once when first opened and again on Refresh. Each procedure is used where it is found, master.dbo.sp_block / master.dbo.sp_WhoIsActive, or installed as tempdb.dbo.usp_block / tempdb.dbo.usp_WhoIsActive, with an "Install in master" button to make it permanent.
• Configurable tree icon style (Emoji/Symbols/Portable/None), resizable panes, background task manager, status history log, and a Check for Updates dialog.

Future Plans

• Reports — a handful of the most useful built-in SSMS reports
• Always On Availability Groups (AAG) — viewing and managing availability group topology and health

Known Issues

• Some terminals (e.g. xfce4-terminal) eat some key shortcuts
• Entra authentication not tested at the moment — no infrastructure available
• Not tested on macOS yet — no Mac available
• Executables are built by GitHub but not signed; checksums are available
• Database Restore dialog needs a rework
• SQL Agent needs a complete rework

Prerequisites

• Go 1.26 or later (only needed to build from source)
• Access to a SQL Server instance
• A terminal emulator supporting 256 colours and UTF-8 (most modern ones do — without UTF-8, tree icons and box-drawing characters won't render correctly)

Installation

• Download the binary for your platform from the github Release and execute it.
• Does not have prerequisites like sql client, odbc etc.

https://github.com/radix29/gossms/releases

if you want to build it yourself:

git clone https://github.com/radix29/gosmo.git
git clone https://github.com/radix29/gossms.git
cd gossms
go build -o gossms ./cmd/gossms

# Or install directly
go install github.com/radix29/gossms/cmd/gossms@latest

Usage

./gossms

goSSMS opens the Connect to Server dialog on startup. Fill it in to connect, or press Escape to dismiss it and work offline — Ctrl+Shift+O reopens it at any time.

Keyboard Reference

Key	Action
F1	Help
F10	Activate menu bar
Ctrl+Q	Quit
Ctrl+Shift+O	Connect to server (falls back to Ctrl+O's behavior on terminals that can't distinguish the Shift)
Ctrl+O	Open a .sql file as a new query
Ctrl+N	New query panel
Ctrl+W	Close active query
Ctrl+S	Save query
Ctrl+C / Ctrl+X / Ctrl+V	Copy / cut / paste (on a focused results grid, Ctrl+C copies the selected cell or block)
Tab	Switch focus explorer ↔ panels
Ctrl+Tab / Ctrl+Shift+Tab	Cycle to next / previous panel
F5	Execute query (selection if any, else the whole query); also refreshes the selected tree node or Properties page
Ctrl+Enter	Select the T-SQL statement at the cursor without executing it
Ctrl+Left/Right	Narrow / widen object explorer
Ctrl+Up/Down	Grow / shrink query editor
Ctrl+PgUp/PgDn	Previous / next result tab
Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y	Undo / redo in editor
Ctrl+F (query editor)	Find and Replace — Match case, whole word, regular expression, and Replace All within the selection
F3 / Shift+F3	Find next / previous, with the Find dialog closed
Ctrl+F3	Find the next occurrence of the word under the cursor
Ctrl+Space (query editor)	Open/force IntelliSense suggestions
Ctrl+R (query editor)	Refresh the cached table/column list
Shift+Arrow	Select text
Alt+Shift+Arrow (query editor)	Block (column) selection — typing, Tab, Backspace/Delete then apply to every row at once, and a block copied this way pastes back rectangularly
Click + drag	Select text with the mouse (Alt+drag makes it a block selection)
Double-click (query editor)	Select the word under the pointer
Mouse wheel (results grid)	Scroll rows (Shift+wheel scrolls columns)
Arrow keys	Navigate tree / grid
Enter / + / - / Backspace	Expand / collapse tree node
Shift+F10 / Menu key	Open the selected tree node's context menu
Right-click (grid cell)	"Show Value" — full cell text in a copyable popup
Drag a grid header separator	Resize the column to its left, past the max default cell length if wanted
Double-click a header separator	Restore that column's default width

Replace has no shortcut of its own — it is Edit > Replace..., or the Replace fields inside the Find dialog. Ctrl+H is deliberately not bound: terminals send it as the same byte (0x08) many of them send for Backspace, so binding it would break Backspace on those.

Configuration

A successful connection is saved automatically, most-recently-used first, capped at 15 profiles. In the Connect dialog, typing 4+ characters into the Server field looks up saved profiles by prefix.

Tools > Options controls the tree icon style, the results grid's maximum default cell length (the width a column is given from its content — drag a header separator to go wider), and IntelliSense on/off — saved immediately to the config file:

• Linux/macOS: ~/.config/gossms/config.json
• Windows: %APPDATA%\gossms\config.json

The config file is human-readable JSON, except saved passwords, which are encrypted (AES-256-GCM) using a key stored in a separate gossms.key file alongside it. Each password is sealed against the server, login, and authentication method it belongs to, so a password blob copied onto a different connection entry will not decrypt. Delete either file to reset all saved connections.

If config.json can't be parsed it is kept as config.json.corrupt before goSSMS falls back to defaults, and a password that can't be decrypted (a replaced key file, a hand-edit) is left on disk untouched rather than overwritten — re-enter it in the Connect dialog to replace it.

Contributing

The codebase is currently unstable and going through regular refactoring, so I'm not accepting pull requests at this time — please open an issue instead. I'll start accepting PRs once the project reaches a released, more stable state.

For the internal package layout and design rationale, see ARCHITECTURE.md.

Acknowledgements

The Activity Monitor's Sessions tab runs sp_WhoIsActive, Adam Machanic's activity-monitoring procedure — https://github.com/amachanic/sp_whoisactive — with thanks. goSSMS carries a copy in internal/activity/whoisactive.sql so it can install one on a server that hasn't got it.

License

goSSMS is © 2026 radix29 and licensed GPL-3.0-or-later; see LICENSE for the full text.

goSSMS is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your
option) any later version.

goSSMS is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License
for more details.

The bundled copy of sp_WhoIsActive is © 2007-2026 Adam Machanic and licensed GPL-3.0 under its own copyright, whose text is carried alongside it as internal/activity/LICENSE.sp_whoisactive. It is used unmodified apart from the two changes its own header records — the release script's SET-options and stub-CREATE batches removed, and its declaration rewritten at install time so the tempdb copy can be named usp_WhoIsActive. It is aggregated with goSSMS, not derived from it; its copyright stays with its author.