phpMyAdmin - MySQL Client
There are many MySQL Clients(or database administration tools) out there - MySQL Front End, Tora, mysql etc. But in the web environment, one client rules - phpMyAdmin. phpMyAdmin is a PHP based(obviously) GUI administration tool for MySQL.
The biggest advantages of phpMyAdmin is that it is web based - it runs on any server capable of handling PHP. Because of this all the online Database Administration is done using phpMyAdmin. If you have a site of your own, and you have the control panel access to it, you will know what I mean. They database management part will be handled by phpMyAdmin. The phpMyAdmin site cites the following as the features of phpMyAdmin...
- Browse, view and drop databases, tables, views, fields and indexes.
- Create, copy, drop, rename and alter databases, tables, fields and indexes.
- Maintain the server, databases and tables, with proposals on server configuration.
- Execute, edit and bookmark any SQL-statement, even batch-queries(This will work only in the latest version of phpMyAdmin).
- Create and read dumps of tables - in various formats like CSV, SQL, etc.
- Export data to various formats: CSV, SQL, XML, Excel and more.
- Control Multiple MySQL servers.
- Manage MySQL users and privileges.
- Check referential integrity in MyISAM tables.
- Using Query-by-example(QBE), create complex queries automatically connecting required tables.
- Search globally in a database or a subset of it.
- Support InnoDB tables and foreign keys.
- Support mysqli, the improved MySQL extension.
- And more...
phpMyAdmin is so commonly used that there is a book - Mastering phpMyAdmin for effective MySQL Management
Reference
- phpMyAdmin Project Documentation
- Learning SQL Using phpMyAdmin
- Doing More With phpMyAdmin - A 7 part tutorial for configuring and using phpMyAdmin.
