I bet that some of you still work with phpMyAdmin and there are plenty of good reasons for that. Perhaps the main reason would be its mobility. Being run by a web server, phpMyAdmin is accessible from anywhere, without installing any extra software, even on the mobiles phones. And the second reason is of course security – most web hosting providers restrict external access to MySQL servers. But there’s absolutely no reason to get used to phpMyAdmin, as there’s software far better than that.
Most of you probably used the MySQL GUI Tools bundle, which is very similar to what phpMyAdmin is – database tweaking, user management, structure design, query builder, etc. Browsing up to the usual MySQL GUI Tools place a few days ago, I encountered the following message:
Users of the MySQL GUI Tools Bundle should plan to upgrade to MySQL Workbench. MySQL Workbench provides DBAs and developers an integrated tools environment for:
- Database Design & Modeling
- SQL Development (replacing MySQL Query Browser)
- Database Administration (replacing MySQL Administrator)
So we’re now forced to upgrade to MySQL Workbench. Honestly, for a moment there I though that it’s just a naming issue, and that MySQL GUI Tools has gone so far, that the guys from Sun Microsystems decided to ship the bundle as a single product – MySQL Workbench, but I was wrong. Browsing the MySQL Workbench website I noticed the archive, which dates back to Novermber 8th, 2007! So it seems that they’ve just merged the two pieces.
MySQL Workbench is far more professional then the GUI Tools, but may be complicated at first sight. And the most funny thing about it is that the MySQL GUI Tools leads to a page to download the 5.1 community version of MySQL Workbench, which unfortunatelly does not have all the promised features (SQL development, data modelling, server administration), and there’s no home screen at all, which is shown on each and every screenshot related to the move!
I thought something was wrong, so I went back to the Workbench homepage, browsed the blogs, forums and downloads. It turned out that 5.2 is the one we were supposed to move to, but it’s still in beta, thus hidden in the downloads. After installing MySQL Workbench 5.2 I finally managed to get to the promising home screen, a little bit fancier than 5.1, and very similar to what we used to see in MySQL GUI Tools, plus the improvements.
Here are a few screenshots:
So I hope to see the 5.2 release very very soon, and, oh come on, drop the phpMyAdmin stuff, that’s for kids ;)