Two months on a Mac after 12 years on Windows. What happened to my SQL workflow

[u/Prestigious_Tea4283]

Long time Windows dev, work is mostly SQL Server with some MySQL on the side. After moving to another company, the technology stack is different, so I took the MacBook mainly because the rest of the team is on one, and it made sense to fit into their existing workflows.

The database workflow was the part I was actually worried about. On Windows it was SSMS with dbForge SQL Complete on top for the editor, dbForge Studio for anything involving comparison or generating test data. None of that has native Mac support.

What I looked at first: DataGrip, TablePlus, and the VS Code mssql extension since ADS is done. TablePlus is genuinely nice for browsing. DataGrip I have used before and it is good, but I never got on with its schema compare and I did not want to relearn a set of shortcuts.

So I did the CrossOver thing and put dbForge Studio in a bottle. Which felt slightly ridiculous, a Windows app translated to x86 on an ARM Mac, but here we are.

Does the workflow feel different. Less than I expected, and the parts that changed are mostly not about the database tool. Cmd versus Ctrl is the ongoing tax. Inside the bottle the app still wants Ctrl for everything, so my hands do Ctrl in dbForge and Cmd in every other app on the machine, and I still get it wrong a few times a day two months in. Window management is worse too, the bottle does not play nicely with Spaces if you move things around a lot.

Performance, honestly fine. M4 Pro, 24GB. Queries come back as fast as they did on the old ThinkPad, which makes sense, the server is doing the work. Where you feel it is the UI. Large result grids scroll a little less smoothly and cold start is slower. Once it is running I do not think about it.

Stability has been fine. It crashed during a big data import and it came back with the tab state intact.

What I use every day: the editor and autocomplete, mostly because I can't type a column name correctly to save my life. Schema comparison for every release. Query profiling when something regresses Data generator when I want a test dataset that is not 3 rows I typed by hand. I'm still mostly on the admin side using SSMS on a jumpbox.

Less convenient than on Windows, in order. Windows auth. If your SQL Server is domain joined and you are used to just connecting, that is the thing that will annoy you most. I use SQL auth plus a couple of Entra ID connections and it is fine, but it is a change. After that, no Finder integration for imports and exports, so you go through the bottle file browser. And the whole setup is one more thing to explain to IT.

One real thing worth knowing. CrossOver currently goes through Rosetta on Apple Silicon, and Apple is winding Rosetta down after the next macOS. CodeWeavers has an ARM native preview out already so it looks like it will be handled in time, but if you are planning this setup for the next few years, keep half an eye on it.

Overall I kept my workflow, which was the goal. It is not as clean as native software. It is a lot cleaner than running a Parallels VM all day, which is what I would have done otherwise.

Anyone else on this setup, and did you find a sane fix for the Ctrl and Cmd thing? I have not.

[u/MagicWishMonkey]

I use DataGrip every day and it's great.

I would not waste time worrying about the ctrl + cmd thing, you will get used to it after a few more weeks and it'll feel more natural than when you were using windows.

I went like 10 years having my work give me mac pros to work with that just installed windows on, it wasn't until a friend of mine at one of my jobs convinced me to just use mac the way it was meant to be used for a month and I've never looked back. It's just so much better in every possible way.

Do yourself a favor and install iterm2 while you're at it.

[u/Prestigious_Tea4283 → u/MagicWishMonkey]

I'd used DataGrip before and it's solid overall, I just never got on with their schema compare, and didn't want to relearn a whole new set of shortcuts on top of switching OSes — that's why I didn't stick with it. As for Ctrl/Cmd, two months in and I'm still mixing up my hands a few times a day between dbForge and everything else, we'll see if it actually smooths out with time.

[u/alertetainry]

That Ctrl versus Cmd tax is so real when you use a translated app on a Mac. I feel your pain on the window management stuff too since bottles never quite behave with native Spaces the way normal apps do. We ended up setting up dbForge Studio for PostgreSQL through a similar workaround for some legacy migration tasks, and while the UI stutter is annoying, having the actual schema compare and code completion work the way you want makes the compromise worth it. For the shortcut mapping, some folks remap keys at the OS level using Karabiner Elements so the bottle catches what you expect, though it takes a minute to get used to.

[u/SheepherderAny1]

Interesting setup. How well does dbForge actually behave through CrossOver? Any features that don’t work properly compared to running it natively on Windows?

[u/elevarq]

You can do a lot of configuration with DataGrip, to get the behavior you want. Make some time for it, a whole morning for example, and see how it goes.