Workbench

[SaranacLake]

Does anyone have experience using MySQL Workbench?

I have been using phpMyAdmin to manage my database, but know that this application seems to draw lots of hatred from people?!  😮

If setting up and learning how to use Workbench is going to take LOTS of time, then I will save it for v2.0 of my website which is almost done.

But if it is super easy to install and use, then I am thinking it might be worth it, since the e-commerce portion of my website has lots of tables, and I would like a way to visualize things - which phpMyAdmin doesn't really offer.

Thoughts?

[kicken]

I usually use it when dealing with mysql databases, but that's not very often.

I'm not sure what you're expecting to do from it.  It's fairly easy to setup and get connected to a DB so you can run queries and look through your tables and data.  It has some design tools to help plan and diagram your database and the relationships between tables which take a little more effort to learn, but that's only if you want to use them.

I haven't used phpMyAdmin in a long time so I'm not sure I could really compare the two, but I personally prefer having the separate desktop application like Workbench over a web app like phpMyAdmin.  

To use Workbench you need to be able to connect to the database server directly or via an SSH tunnel.  On shared hosting that may or may not be possible, which is why many of them provide something like phpMyAdmin.  For your own private server it shouldn't be a problem.

[SaranacLake]

13 minutes ago, kicken said:

I usually use it when dealing with mysql databases, but that's not very often.

So what do you use?

 

13 minutes ago, kicken said:

I'm not sure what you're expecting to do from it.  It's fairly easy to setup and get connected to a DB so you can run queries and look through your tables and data.  It has some design tools to help plan and diagram your database and the relationships between tables which take a little more effort to learn, but that's only if you want to use them.

Well the main thing I would like moving forward is the ability to create ERDs.

Right now I am drawing out my entire system on paper, which is fine, but when you have 50-100 tables, and you want to be able to quickly see a topology of your whole data model, I am thinking having a data modeling tool would be better.

There would also be the benefit, in theory, or forward and reverse-engineering from your ERDs.

 

13 minutes ago, kicken said:

I haven't used phpMyAdmin in a long time so I'm not sure I could really compare the two, but I personally prefer having the separate desktop application like Workbench over a web app like phpMyAdmin.  

To use Workbench you need to be able to connect to the database server directly or via an SSH tunnel.

Well, locally for dev I use MAMP.

So how hard would it be to hook up Workbench to point to my MAMP instance?  (And are there any security consdierations?)

 

13 minutes ago, kicken said:

On shared hosting that may or may not be possible, which is why many of them provide something like phpMyAdmin.  For your own private server it shouldn't be a problem.

Well, I have a VPS,on I believe that cPanel comes with a way to interface with MySQL - it could very well be phpMyAdmin, but I forget.

And since you bring this up, do you have any advice and a "workflow" for how I should work moving forward?

Because I do not have a live business/website yet, I can just do everything locally on my laptop using MAMP.  But moving forward, I will need to find an easy way to take what I have on my laptop in MAMP and promote it to production on my VPS.  (That could probably be a thread or two on its own!)

Any suggestions?

 

[requinix]

1 hour ago, SaranacLake said:

But if it is super easy to install and use, then I am thinking it might be worth it,

Try it and find out.

In the hour+ since you posted this thread, you could have installed MySQL Workbench, set it up, and started using it.