Just a bit of a rant here...
If there were ever any 2 products from Microsoft that were just made for each other it is Excel and SQL Server... (well, that is, now that the newer xlsx format is available).
But sadly, these two products don't 'schmooze' as easily as they might.
Oh sure there are plenty of ways to 'integrate' Excel to SQL Server, but they are all sadly wanting - to prove that point all you have to do is Google (or Bing, or whatever) something like 'how do I submit parameter queries to SQL Server from Excel' and you'll suddenly see my point here.
All those GUI tools don't do the job well.
Writing .Net or DBO or any of the other alphabet soup of products... well, you can do it, but you really need to know those languages and some 'gotchas' in order to make those work.
If you've ever developed an SSRS report in BIDS, you know how simple and straightforward it is.
Build a data source. Set the connection for the data source. Write the query. Need input parameters? Define them in the query object. Done. Now run the query - boom, you have your answer set.
Here's the real question ... Why in the world isn't this kind of functionality provided as a means to integrate Excel to SQL Server?
Surely Microsoft can see that this capability ought to exist for Excel. If they cannot it is beyond me why they cannot... or maybe it isn't beyond me.
Because after all, if SQL developers had such a tool, they wouldn't need Sharepoint, or all the other middleware tools would they?
They wouldn't need anything at all except Excel and SQL Server...and maybe that's why it won't ever happen?
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