There’s an interesting pattern in how teams approach index sql management.

Early stage → everything is scripts.
Growth stage → scripts start to break down.
Later → GUI tools quietly become the default.

Azure Data Studio was often the lightweight starting point — until Microsoft retired it in February 2026 and pointed users toward Visual Studio Code with the MSSQL extension instead.

DataGrip, on the other hand, is usually chosen by developers who work across multiple databases and want consistency in how they manage structures like indexes.

And then you have tools like dbForge Studio for SQL Server, which tend to appear in workflows where index tuning is just one piece of a bigger database lifecycle.

What’s interesting is that teams rarely “choose one forever.”
They evolve their stack as complexity grows — and index management evolves with it.