Posted on 2 Comments

phpMyAdmin vs MySQL Workbench

What an odd comparison, you might think! I’d have thought so too, but let’s explore this for a minute…

Last month, Akash Metha did an excellent review of GUI tools at the Brisbane MySQL Group meeting.
Among the numerous OS specific apps (Windows, Mac, Linux) some are cross platform, but the most prolific ones appear to be Windows specific, like HeidiSQL and Webyog.
And as it turns out, everybody uses phpMyAdmin at least sometimes. Other web-based tools include snazzy Flash or Ajax/JavaScript magic, but while they look nice, the attendees reckon it’s just a tad indulgent and more simple stuff like phpMyAdmin is generally preferred – In 2007 phpMyAdmin won the SourceForge.net Community Choice Award for “Best Tool or Utility for SysAdmins”.

What was nice in the GUI overview though, was a little Ajax app offering visual schema design. And I thought “hey that’s cool, I’ll talk to the phpMyAdmin guys at the MySQL Conf and see if they could integrate something like that”. So I did. I talked with Marc Delisle… and he took me over to their booth in the DotOrg pavilion, and simply demonstrated a component that had been in phpMyAdmin for a few years already! It only deals with foreign key constraints, but I reckon that’s really all you want anyway – it’s fine to use the regular table structure editor for other stuff.

It’s called “Relation View” and available through a link when in the table Structure tab.

So there you have it. Visual schema design/viewing. For free, platform independent, and what have you. The phpMyAdmin are a low-key gang, and this component is only enabled if the necessary underlying support tables are present, and (if I remember correctly) some php extension(s). So many people may have never encountered it on their own installation. But it’s all there! So this is my little marketing pitch for that great effort. Thanks Marc & all other people who work on phpMyAdmin. A great tool indeed!

(if anyone has a screenshot handy for me, I’d be happy to plug it in!)

Posted on 2 Comments

2 thoughts on “phpMyAdmin vs MySQL Workbench

  1. Your title suggests a comparison between MySQL Workbench and phpMyAdmin, but I see no reference to MySQL Workbench anywhere in the article…?

  2. An exercise for the reader. The conjecture is that the one thing you’d want visual representation for (relationship overview/editing, i.e. foreign keys and printing out the whole thing) can be done with a free web-based tool, rather than requiring a .Net dependent not-quite-free tool. You try it, and see what you think. Report back here?

Comments are closed.