Netune Free Beta Version

Point Netune at a SQL Server database and it reads the real data, works out what shape a warehouse for it should be, and writes the SQL. This is the free beta: the reading, the scoring, the design and the staging layer, on your own computer, with nothing sent anywhere.

If you prefer a terminal

The button above is the ordinary way in. For people who would rather type, there is one line for PowerShell (press the Windows key, type powershell, Enter; in a Command Prompt, type powershell first). Select it and copy it yourself — there is deliberately no Copy button:

If your browser or ad-blocker warns about this line, that is a good instinct. Scams use the same shape — a web page that puts a PowerShell command on your clipboard and asks you to paste it. That is why nothing here writes to your clipboard, and why the script is plain text you can read first. If you would rather not run a command from a website at all, use the Download button above: it needs none.

The two routes end differently, and that is the point. The zip installs nothing: it is a folder you keep where you like and delete when you are done. The line above does a real install — it fetches Netune's setup program, checks it against its published SHA-256 and stops if it does not match, and runs it: Netune lands in your own user folder (%LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\Netune, no administrator rights and nothing under Program Files), with Desktop and Start-menu shortcuts and an entry under Settings › Apps to remove it again. Run the same line later and it updates in place. Either way your saved projects live elsewhere and are never touched — and because the script does that checksum test itself, Windows has nothing to warn you about.

What Netune does

Most warehouse tools start from a model somebody has already drawn. Netune starts from the database. It connects to SQL Server, profiles every table it is allowed to read — row counts, keys, how values change over time, which columns look like measures and which like attributes — and classifies each table as a fact, a dimension, a bridge or none of those.

Then it scores eight modelling methodologies against what it measured — Kimball, Inmon, Data Vault 2.0, Medallion, Galaxy, One Big Table, Anchor Modeling and Activity Schema — and shows the evidence for each rather than a verdict. You choose one, answer the two questions only a person can answer (the grain of each fact, and how much history each dimension keeps), and Netune draws the target design on a canvas you can edit: rename, retype, add and delete columns, choose where each is read from. Every edit is checked against what the load would do with it.

The output is T-SQL you can read before running: the CREATE TABLE script for the whole design, with keys, indexes and the descriptions you agreed to. The staging layer can be created and filled from inside Netune, in a database you name — never the one it read from.

What is in the free beta, and what is not

The free edition is the whole of Netune's thinking: everything that reads, profiles, scores, designs and stages. The full edition adds the parts that take a designed warehouse and make it run and keep it running. The free edition tells you, inside the program, exactly where that line is.

What you need

• Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit. Netune runs on your PC and opens in whichever browser you use. It needs no administrator rights and writes nothing outside the folder you unzip it into.
• A SQL Server you can read. Any edition from 2016 on, Express included, or Azure SQL. Netune needs read access to the database it profiles, and write access only to whichever other database you choose to stage into.
• The Microsoft ODBC Driver for SQL Server (17 or 18). Most machines that talk to SQL Server already have it; if yours does not, Netune says so on the first screen and links to it.
• About 8 GB of memory to be comfortable. The language model is optional and adds 1–5 GB depending on which you pick; Netune measures your machine before offering one.

How to run it

1. Download the zip above and unzip it anywhere — your Documents folder, a USB stick, wherever. Nothing is installed and nothing is written outside that folder.
2. Double-click Netune.exe. A small window opens, Netune picks a free port, and your browser opens on it. Leave that window open while you work; closing it stops Netune.
3. Expect a notice from Windows the first time, and keep going. Windows says "Windows protected your PC" about anything new that is not yet code-signed — it is counting how many people have run the file, not saying anything about the file itself. Choose More info, then Run anyway. If you would rather check first, the zip's SHA-256 is on the release page, and certutil -hashfile Netune-1.0.0-free.zip SHA256 prints the one you have. The one-line install below meets no such notice at all, because it makes that same check for you.
4. Type your server name and sign in. Windows login, a SQL login or Microsoft Entra — then List tables, tick the ones you care about, and Analyze.
5. Read the structural profile, choose a methodology, answer the grain and history questions, and press Build design. Right-click any card to edit it.
6. Generate SQL, read it, and — if you want staging built — open STG Deploy, name a target database, preview, and confirm.
7. Optionally, open the Model panel to fetch a language model if you want the chat and readable names.

What we would like to hear about

This is a beta, and the point of it is to see Netune meet databases we have never seen. The things most worth a message:

• A table Netune classified wrongly, or a methodology score that did not match your own judgement — and why.
• A source type it could not handle, a sign-in mode that failed, or a generated script that SQL Server refused.
• Anything on the first run that read as "broken" rather than "not set up yet".
• What you would need to see before you would let it build the warehouse layer for real.

Write to dataash@proton.me, or use the contact form. Where a project file helps, Netune's saved projects contain no passwords, so they are safe to send.

Leave a line of feedback

Fifty words at most, and it is appended — as written, with the date — to a public text file in Netune's repository, oldest first. No name, no e-mail, nothing else is stored. So say what you found, not who you are.

The small print

The free edition is free to use, including at work. The licence travels in the download as app\LICENSE.txt, together with app\THIRD-PARTY.md, which lists the software Netune is built on and the terms of each language model it suggests. Language models are not part of Netune: when you ask for one, it is downloaded from its publisher, checked against the publisher's own hash, and licensed to you by its author under terms Netune shows you first. Netune is provided as is; review what it generates before you run it anywhere that matters, and keep backups — the same advice as for any tool that writes SQL.