MySQL Workbench - Top 13 things you should know

[Chris]

MySQL Workbench has come a long way and keeps getting better! I honestly don't think that millage may vary on this one as it is one of the best no-cost GUI tools created for MySQL.

I've always been pro command line for MySQL administration; however, there have always been powerful GUI tools that can aid administration, development and other tasks. Some great tools that I have used in the past are Toad, Navicat, phpmyadmin, and WebYog. Although all of the tools listed above are good I have had a lot of success with MySQL Workbench, plus it's free.

I should also note that when I do use MySQL Workbench it's more for my QA, test and development MySQL instances. Call me crazy but I think it's just too easy to inadvertently damage production with how easy this tool is to work with. Plus, in most environments you don't want a flock of users looking at production servers anyway. That said, I do recommend MySQL Workbench to my developers' and sometimes even a savvy manager as long as they are off my production servers.

A full feature list can be found here. If you do venture to the feature list page, you should notice that there are few differences between the MySQL Workbench Community Edition (Open Source (GPL License)) and the commercial software version, MySQL Workbench Standard Edition (commercial software). Support for the standard addition is also offered on all levels of MySQL Support. There is a lot inside the MySQL Workbench so this makes it more of a set of GUI tools.
Here are the three main tools:
    •    SQL Development
    •    Data Modeling
    •    Serer Administration

 

See the full Top 13 list here...