I have been talking with a group of folks who have been making a product that has lots of free functionality, including the ability to centrally manage many MySQL instances. The administration functions include starting and stopping MySQL, seeing status and system variables, seeing and managing the MySQL config file (/etc/my.cnf), seeing and managing accounts, a small dashboard of overall health graphs, and more.

With this free tool you can look at and manage local and remote databases. It supports ssh tunneling, including ssh using password-protected ssh keys. It’s pretty neat, and I have been working with the product manager to add features. I think this took will become the de facto standard for centralized GUI administration of MySQL.

The tool is
MySQL workbench….Surprise! One of the best new features for the administrator is that you can now create an administration connection for an existing workbench connection …

MySQL Workbench 5.2.16 is a beta release, which comes with upgraded query browser, upgraded system administrator and addition features of workbench as a all in one bundle.

I was using workbench 5.0 earlier and the changes in 5.2.16 is very much visible. Best thing I could utilize is printing the ER diagrams to pdf files and other file formats. It’s now lot more easier to use and seems like many bugs have been addressed.

The 5.2.16 beta release is enabled to store passwords in OSX-keychain, gnome-keyring or on windows in a encrypted password-vault-file
New wizard added and reworked the “new server instance”.
Features like SQL templates from object context-menu to copy statements to clipboard or right into the query area
Administration module stabilization has been improved
Added option to change the placement of the sidebar in query mode (windows only currently)

Optimization options where you …

I already mentioned this repository several times on my blog. It is the repository where I’m trying to keep bleeding edge stuff for MySQL. I’ve been updating it recently and we’ve got new package there and some interesting updates I want to mention.

MariaDB and MySQL

First thing to mention is that this repository contains MariaDB builds. MariaDB is fork of MySQL and their goals are certainly interesting. For list of differences, try upstream page. As I consider it interesting, I’m keeping eye on it Maybe our users may benefit from it. But currently it is also a source of possible problems in this repository as it contains MySQL as well. I tried to modify both …

It’s been some time already since I informed you about server: database: UNSTABLE repository in openSUSE Build Service. Today I want to mention what is going on there. As the name of the repository suggests, it’s probably not the best idea to use anything from here on your production servers

MySQL 5.4

I’m keeping there MySQL 5.4. Currently in version 5.4.3 beta. 5.4 branch of MySQL contains some patches to improve performance. That is the reason why it might be interesting. Downside is that it isn’t released as often as 5.1 and it is not considered production ready. I already wrote …

MySQL Workbench Version 5.1.16 the General Availability build can be downloaded at http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/workbench/5.1.html.Congratulations to the Workbench team for their great effort in this release.

MySQL Workbench has some nice export features. They include:Forward engineer SQL Create ScriptForward Engineer SQL ALTER ScriptSynchronize With SQL Create ScriptExport as PNGExport as SVGExport as Single Page PDFExport as Single Page PostScript FileExport options (just choose File Menu then Export option):

MySQL Workbench 5.2 AlphaMy understanding is the MySQL Workbench 5.2 has the core 5.1 modeling features as well as the new Query Browser. The Query Browser has been easy to use but the feature functionality is still in the alpha phase. Adding the Query Browser in the 5.2 release adds a nice dimension of being able to look at the data model, physical table and data very easily. So far I have

What is MySQL Workbench?MySQL Workbench is a visual database design tool available on Window, Linux and Mac OS. The MySQL Administrator and Query Browser tools have been deprecated. The database GUI interfaces will be rolled into the MySQL Workbench 5.2 release (currently alpha). MySQL Workbench is available in a Community (free) and Enterprise edition (paid license). Below are a few good

Always looking at new toolsI've been looking for a better tool to work in a MySQL environment when I want to demo relationships between data models, physical tables, data and SQL code. It has to be a tool that the students can pick up easily without spending a lot of time understanding how it works. It's always an investment to learn another tool. So I've downloaded the MySQL Workbench 5.2

I’ve been using the MySQL Workbench 5.1 beta for the past few days now, and I’m wondering how I designed databases without it.

Okay, so that’s a pretty strong statement, but I’m genuinely happy with it. 5.1 has fixed my main problem with 5.0, in that the EER diagram mode was horribly slow to render, now it’s all nice and smooth. The ability to easily visualise tables and their relationships makes design very simple.

In fact, I really only have one (minor) complaint, the ability to export without foreign keys would be nice. Sometimes you just don’t want to deal with the performance hit.

That’s about it. Go and download the OSS edition for free now, have a play around. Make it your Friday afternoon experiment. I promise you’ll like it.