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MySQL Official GUI Interface
ChopsMIDI writes "Announced today at MySQL, is the new GUI for MySQL: The MySQL Administrator. This integrates database management and maintenance into a 'seamless' GUI. 'Easily perform all the command line operations visually including configuring servers, administering users, and dynamically monitoring database health. Other common administrative tasks such as monitoring replication status, backup and restore, and viewing logs can also be performed through the MySQL Administrator graphical console.' This sounds like a pretty sweet tool, but sadly, it's not available for downlodad yet, but it does have some nice screenshots."
Oracle used to (maybe they still do) all there front ends and installers in java so they were cross platform. They show an XP screen shot, but don't seemed to detail what platforms this will run under.
This is a very welcome addition to the package. I know we've had tools like MySQL Navigator for a while, but they are fairly limited.
:(
At the end of the day, MySQL is competing directly with MS SQL Server, which comes with Enterprise Manager. And no matter how easy it is to crash EM, it's what the boss sees when he makes his purchasing descision.
I personally know of at least one commercial web site that is using MS SQL and ASP, which won over MySQL and PHP purely on the fact that the buyer liked the being able to mess around with the DB with a GUI. The fact that he hasn't touched it since, and the developer hardly uses it either are beside the point.
But I do hope that the MySQL GUI doesn't have the same propensity to crash in the middle of a multi-table DB update like EM does.
All that said though, EM is a very capable tool, and has made plenty of DB administrators out of people who really aren't very adept with the SQL langauge itself (...kinda like the rest of Microsoft's products, if you think about it). When MySQL can do the same thing, it will go a long way toward helping itself and Linux on the road to general acceptance.
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
Will this product be backwards compatible with older versions of MySQL (3.x, 4.x, etc)...
From the looks of it, this is either a replacement for Control Center or more than likely this will serve as the administrative package and Control Center will still server as a data entry and database design package...I don't actually see any table manipulation functions in this application...
If you want half a dozen screenshots for a mythical product, give me half a day I'll create the phony GUI using Delphi or Visual Studio. Which, come to think of it, is almost certainly what they did. Why else no Linux screenshots? If they had them, they'd certainly show them, given the Linux bias of the typical MySQL user.
Look, guys, it's all about data management. The better GUI is the more complicated data can be managed. And that means more chances that MySQL developers will understand that in order to manage complicated data you have to have ACID. So, with MySQL v6 perhaps non-transactional updates will be more exception then a default rule.
On the other side, the better GUI MySQL has got is the more motivation PostgreSQL guys will have to improve PgAdmin. So, the more chances that with PostgreSQL v8 we'll rarely hear here "Postgre... who?" The name will begin being recocognized not only by experts.
On the other-other side (how many sides do I have?), I am thinking about better data-querying tool for ZODB. And MySQL GUI is a good source of good ideas.
Less is more !
<aol />
I was going to suggest MySQLFront, but you beat me to it. :-)
When I first started using MySQL a few years ago, I wanted to find a nice GUI front end for it, partly because relational databases are designed to hold tables of data, and I just think it's nicer to have that data presented as something looking like a spreadsheet application rather than ascii in a console. Sometimes, GUIs are just nicer tools, and for me this is one of those cases.
More importantly, I wanted to set up the company database so that other staff could work with the system in a way roughly resembling Microsoft Access, which was being used by some people in other contexts -- but I didn't want it to acctually be Access (if only to make it clear that this wasn't just something running on their desktop), so that ruled out ODBC.
Of all the many MySQL GUIs I found -- this would have been 2000 or so -- none of them was half as well done as MySQLFront. It was small, fast, attractive, and functional. The others either had clumsy interfaces, were ugly Tk monstrosities (if ugly & broken is the price to be paid for portability ...portability isn't so important), or just couldn't do certain things with the database. MySQLFront was a dream compared to the others.
Unfortunately, for some reason, the guy developing it, Ansgar Becker, abandoned it abruptly in the middle of 2002, and it got very hard to find copies of the application after that. The last version released was 2.4 or something, but copies of 2.5 turned up, and that was it.
And that makes the current status of MySQLFront very confusing -- all of a sudden, the site is offering downloads of version 3.0. Where did this come from? Is Ansgar involved again? Did someone get their hands on the source code? I don't get it....
Actually, answering my own question, it looks like his website explains all -- in German:
According to Babelfish,
So I guess it's a new application under the same name?
In any case, it's alive again, and that's great. It's a shame that it's Windows only, but this really is by far the best graphical MySQL frontend that I know of, and I've tried many. If the new developer[s] wants to, or the source gets opened, maybe we'll see versions of it for Linux and Macintosh some day. But just having it revived on Windows is great news...
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL