If you're a MacOS user and your DB of choice is supported, this is my choice: https://www.beekeeperstudio.io/
If you're a Postgres user, pgAdmin had previously been my go to: https://www.pgadmin.org/
You could then scale up to ODBC or SQL databases as time went on. It was part of that golden era of tools that did lots of useful things, and could be used by those with domain knowledge, right before .NET infected Microsoft.
If you needed to interface with specialized hardware (as I did a few times), you could use VBA or Delphi to do that work, and tie it into the back-end, while providing a good UI for the person operating the hardware.
I've used almost all of the major tools for other DBs, and they feel like toys or simple query runners in comparison. The biggest downside to SSMS is that it does feel and perform like the bloated, kitchen sink it is, but honestly, things that do more than run queries, like pgAdmin are just as slow or slower and don't offer nearly as nice of an experience.
They have a tool called DataGrip as well [1]
NB: It's an electron app, but is performant IMHO
Otherwise, I just use the command line.
PgAdmin never got me out of the psql terminal but DBeaver has been a pleasure to use
I'm so used to it, thats it's one of the reasons I don't use Postgres LOL
It’s a great ssh client.
Honorable mentions: popcorntime, transmission.
