DB Interfaces and the comparison thereof

April 13, 2004 11:48 PM

I'm looking at database packages and wondering if anyone has had first-hand experience with direct interfaces for PostgreSQL, SQLite, BerkeleyDB or MySQL, either of the command-line variety or via a web-based GUI? I'm very familiar with phpMyAdmin but that's where my experience stops. How might the above compare with phpMyAdmin?

Mind you, I already understand the features/benefits/drawbacks of the databases themselves. It's the interfaces (especially web-based) that I'm interested in.
posted by fooljay to Computers & Internet (12 answers total)

MySQL's command-line interface is a constant tool for me... I prefer it to pretty much any other interface. You really get down and dirty with the SQL that way, and I find it to be easier to run things quickly and to "proof" queries that I'm writing in PHP by writing them in the command-interface first.

I've also used DBVisualiser, which connects via ODBC, Access in throu ODBC, and used phpMyAdmin.

Toe-may-to, toe-mah-to.
posted by SpecialK at 12:56 AM on April 14, 2004

Response by poster: I probably should have also said that I'm very familiar with MySQL's command-line interface, although I thought that was implied. In retrospect that is a silly assumption.

What I'm mainly looking for is people who use databases other than MySQL or those who use an MySQL through an interface other than phpMyAdmin or the MySQL command line.

Thanks though SpecialK. :-)
posted by fooljay at 1:14 AM on April 14, 2004

Well there's a desk top front end to PostgreSQL call pgAdmin which looks good. And there's also phpPgAdmin which looks to have shared the phpmyadmin interface at one point.
posted by gi_wrighty at 7:29 AM on April 14, 2004

i use squirrel sql almost exclusively. it's a java based desktop package that can run nearly everywhere, and connect to nearly any type of database.
posted by lescour at 7:50 AM on April 14, 2004

Aqua Data Studio is another Java-based app for most database platforms out there. Works very well for me. Free for personal and evaluation use.
posted by Oops at 8:31 AM on April 14, 2004

I have recently been suprised to find that Access does not suck as an interface to (1) MS SQL (of course) and (2) MySQL.

MySQL's own MySQLcc is worth looking at, too.
posted by weston at 12:06 PM on April 14, 2004

I use MySQL Tools religiously. You gotta buy it, however, otherwise it's "delayware", and that gets kinda annoying. Its interface is a LOT like MS SQL server explorer/query analyzer, so if you have experience with those, you'll be in good shape.
posted by taumeson at 12:11 PM on April 14, 2004

I find pgAdmin extremely useful, especially for managing permissions. Its also nice to be able to do updates on rows just by looking at the data and pointing and clicking. Plus, I use its built-in Windows-help-ified version of the postgre manual nearly constantly (this may say as much about me as it does about pgAdmin).
posted by gsteff at 1:10 PM on April 14, 2004

Gee, pgAdmin looks great - but there's no OS X port yet, so I'm still SSHing to the server and using psql, the standard command-line tool that comes with Postgres.

psql is pretty primitive; it links against readkey so you have the usual history and line-editing tools, but since that's line-based rather than command-based I usually still end up editing SQL in a text editor and pasting it into psql.
posted by nicwolff at 1:35 PM on April 14, 2004

For MySQL, I'm using navicat, but don't recommend it. Terrible user interface, it never does exactly what you think it'll do, and it has a habit of crashing when it shouldn't. It looks awful as well. I haven't found an alternative that's as good though and costs as little as it did. I'm watching this post with interest!
posted by seanyboy at 1:35 PM on April 14, 2004

phpFlashMyAdmin is a Flash/PHP MySQL admin interface (with an online demo). I haven't used it myself, though.
posted by sad_otter at 3:25 PM on April 14, 2004

Response by poster: Flash!? That's nuts!

Thanks so much for your replies everyone. I'm checking out the recommendations now.
posted by fooljay at 4:53 AM on April 15, 2004