SQLlyFeatures
A guided tour of SQLly, arranged around the work you are here to do.
SQLly is built around one simple idea: the tool should know enough about your database to be genuinely helpful. These guides follow the shape of real work - writing a query, understanding its result, keeping a collection of connections straight, and not breaking production on a Friday.
The daily loop
Query
An editor that completes SQL from a live model of your schema and data, with execution you can cancel, a careful formatter, and comment directives that reshape the output.
Results
Format every column, pivot and chart in place, edit rows, diff two runs, export a dozen ways, and lay multiple result sets out to suit the task.
Databases
Which engines SQLly speaks to, and how it keeps their differences from becoming your problem.
Knowing your schema
Multi-modal schema
Live databases plus local DDL in one model, with provenance, drift, and uncertainty kept visible.
Intelligence
Catalog-grounded summaries, review, and search - through a model you choose, on device by default.
Tools
The admin surfaces: dashboards, agent jobs, security, backups, compares, transfers, indexes, diagrams, and docs.
Not breaking things
Safety & guardrails
Read-only connections, rollback wrapping, confirmations, and a production lock that expires by itself.
Identity gates
Touch ID and Windows Hello where a mistake would be expensive - and nowhere else.
Keeping it all straight
Server Explorer
Connections and their schema, grouped the way you think about your work.
Connection Organization
Clients, projects, and environments as independent dimensions, with colors and inherited policy.
Files & sync
Everything as plain files you own, and an opt-in way to carry them between machines.
How it feels and where it runs
Speed & access
A native engine, streaming results, an encrypted relay for remote work, and no telemetry.
Platforms
The same GPU-rendered workbench on macOS, Windows, and Linux - plus an in-tab browser demo.
These guides explain both shipping features and work still in progress, and each page says which it is. For the full status-tagged list, visit Features. The engineering underneath is written up in Platform.
In this section
- Query — A place to write SQL with a little less busywork and a lot more context.
- Results — Read the answer, shape it for the task, and take it with you when you are done.
- Databases — See which engines SQLly can connect to today and how it keeps their differences from getting in your way.
- Intelligence — Tools that help SQLly explain your database in plain language without pretending it knows more than it does.
- Multi-modal schema — Bring live databases, local DDL, work in progress, and Git context into one useful picture.
- Safety & guardrails — Put a thoughtful pause in front of risky work while keeping ordinary reads pleasantly boring.
- Identity gates — Use your operating system's identity check where a mistake would be expensive, and leave routine work alone.
- Server Explorer — Keep connections and their schema close at hand, organized for the way you think about your work.
- Connection Organization — Give every connection enough context that the right database is easy to spot before you touch it.
- Speed & access — The engineering behind a responsive workbench, remote reach when you need it, and privacy when you do not.
- Platforms — The same native SQLly workbench on the desktops where real database work happens.
- Files & sync — Keep your SQLly world in plain files, then choose if and how those files travel with you.
- Tools — The admin tools SQLly opens from the Object Explorer's right-click Tools menu - some for a whole server, some scoped to a single database.