Reporting / ActiveX Components (ActiveX Controls, COM Objects & OLE Objects) / SQL Server Tools & SQL Server Utilities

Microsoft first introduced the term ActiveX in 1996 when they launched a downloadable user interface control or software component that could be used by Internet Explorer to give more interactive or active content on a Web page to the reader. ActiveX controls were a re-branded subset of OLE custom controls (OCX) or OLE controls (OCXes) that were streamlined for downloading over the Internet and that could be digitally signed for security and authentication reasons. These ActiveX downloads were also tagged or marked as being safe for scripting and safe for initialization, to help give users confidence in using them in ActiveX Internet apps, as they were less likely to start making unauthorized actions on their systems. ActiveX controls also supported threading models, such as Apartment Model Threading, to try and improve performance in a multi-user or multi-process environment.

OLE controls (OCX's) or Object Linking and Embedding controls were themselves the successor to VBX controls first introduced by Microsoft to help programmers extend the functionality and features of their Visual Basic program by buying and reusing a VBX control built by another programmer or company, with expertise in a specific area. VBXes were limited to 16 bit usage for example on Windows 3.x, OCXes were available for both 16 bit or 32 bit architectures and began being widely used as people adopted Windows 95, although most people tended to use VBXes on 16-bit systems and OCX controls or OLE components on 32-bit systems for performance reasons. OLE itself was based on earlier work by Microsoft in their Office products to allow data to be exchanged and reused as objects inside other documents or files, such as embedding an Excel spreadsheet in a Word document and updating the content of that Excel spreadsheet for display using Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE). Hence the term OLE document, that is still in use today.

OLE was part of the Microsoft COM or Component Object Model, that enabled programmers to reuse software components and services in a logical and object oriented manner. COM was extended and expanded over the years to include DCOM, the Distributed Component Object Model that allowed programmers to call OLE objects or COM objects situated on other computers or servers. COM+ was added to support transaction services using technologies such as Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS) and this first appeared when Windows 2000 was launched to better support distributed transactions in more complex applications, where higher performance and throughput was required. COM has gradually become a common term used to refer to: COM, DCOM, COM+, OLE and ActiveX technologies in general.

ActiveX components can be created in a variety of object oriented programming languages, but are most commonly created using C++ and the Microsoft Foundation Class (MFC), such as: MFC 4.0, MFC 4.2 and MFC 6.0. When VB 5 was released in became possible for a Visual Basic programmer to create an ActiveX component for reuse by other people and whilst most programmers claim that the best ActiveX components were written in Visual C++ or by utilizing the ActiveX Template Library, it did not stop some entrepreneurial developers from Janus Systems writing one of the bestselling ActiveX UI controls of all time in VB5 and VB6, called Janus GridEx, a VB6 ActiveX, that gives the look and feel of the Microsoft Outlook UI inside your app.

ActiveX components and ActiveX controls come with a variety of file extensions such as: .exe, .dll and .ocx and these denote a certain type of usage either in-process as part of your program or app (an ActiveX DLL), or out-of-process as a standalone executable (an ActiveX Exe), as an ActiveX control or OCX control mainly used as a UI control on a form or page. Downloadable ActiveX controls are also packaged as .cab files or Cabinet files. These CAB files are packages of files compressed to take up less space and hence can be downloaded more efficiently over the Internet.

In this ActiveX Component gallery you will find a variety of commercial products that are ActiveX objects or ActiveX controls that people sometime refer to as VB controls or as a VB object, as they are often used within Visual Basic. You will find ActiveX Windows components that allow you to carry out visuals tasks, such as an ActiveX UI control for displaying video or images, an ActiveX image control or a non-Visual ActiveX upload component that will allow you to push a file up onto a server over the Internet using HTTP or FTP protocols.

What is SQL Server? SQL Server is a relational database product from Microsoft sometimes called MS SQL Server or MSFT SQL Server.

In this area of our product catalog you will find commercial grade, quality SQL Server tools that will help you manage your MS SQL Server database. We have SQL Server database tools that work with various versions of SQL Server, so we have SQL Server 2008 tools and SQL Server 2005 tools for you to assess. Many of these SQL Server tool products have trials available as SQL Server tools downloads for you to evaluate. This SQL Server product gallery allows you to find, read about, compare, download, review, try and buy Microsoft SQL Server tools.

The SQL Server utilities listed here in our on-line catalog of SQL Server tool products cover a wide variety of functionality. For example, you will find SQL tools that allow you to compare SQL statements and to compare schemas in your SQL Server database. Some of these SQL Server tools go further than this and then allow you to track changes in your SQL Server database, then synchronize the SQL Server databases if they are found to be different. There are also advanced SQL Server audit and SQL Server log tools, to help you manage and monitor the SQL audit and SQL log files produced by your SQL Server db. SQL Server backup tools and backup utilities are also available, to help you manage your MSFT SQL Server data and back it up securely and efficiently. We also have SQL Server data recovery tool, that help you get data back that you may have lost due to a failure of some sort.

Looking at SQL Server tools aimed at developers and SQL Server testing, there are tools for developers to help them compare and update data schemas from one version release to another. SQL Server test data generator tools are also available, to populate your empty dev databases with realistic data, so that you can run tests more easily before you deploy your SQL Server data based application. There are SQL refactoring tools to help format your code in a standard way to make it more readable and easier to maintain. In addition there are a wide variety of data access and data binding tools, utilities and software components to help you get reliable and fast access to your SQL Server data.

So whether you are looking for a SQL Server 2005 tool or a SQL Server 2008 tool or a specific SQL Server utility, we have a wide range of products for you to compare, download, review, try and buy. This area of our Web site is updated regularly with new SQL Server tool products and new SQL Server utility releases, so if you want to keep up to date with all the SQL Server Tools News, please subscribe to our SQL Server tool RSS news feed.