Semantic and ubiqutous web is with us right now and we are able to make the most of it for your business
In the open source software community we have many good command line tools, however visual tools are scarcer, but still can be found on the Internet.
When working on larger systems, visual modelling tools are essential for developers to be able to keep track of what is where and how the information is organised.
Within the open source community these visual tools are not a very usual occurrence, but they can be found.
A good example is the so called DB Designer 4, which is a tool used for visual modelling of MySQL databases and it is available fully free of charge.
Even though most of the time command line programming is preferred, because of the highest level of control over the source code of an application, sometimes modelling is the only way to see the bigger picture.
DB Designer 4 offers a visual approach to MySQL database creation, so you are able to create tables, drag them around the interface, swap the position of the columns in tables, make associations and organise your database model view as you like.
The tool is very good for quick mock up of databases and creating the most essential aspects of your data models in an easy to use and understand manner.
Modelling databases in DB Designer 4 is similar to drawing UML diagrams.
The interface offers zoom functionality so that bigger database models can fit on the screen.
It is also possible to group tables into separate areas on the screen providing for easier readability and more modular view of the overall database schema.
Adding new columns to the table is easy, but the interface is not that 'well-behaved', so you will just have to put up with having to double click on some cells when you don't expect to, or hit enter in order to make a cell active when you expect the interface to automatically make that available for you.
These small mishaps in the interface can be a little annoying sometimes, but the most important fact is that the software works and it speeds up database development and modelling process drastically.
One of the totally required aspects of an application such as DB Designer 4 is for it to be able to export the relevant SQL source code in a simple format to be used within you PHPMyAdmin tool or whatever you like to use from there on.
DB Designer 4 does this with ease and it is possible to export the entire database in a simple .sql text file which can then be imported through PHPMyAdmin into your database.
Furthermore, DB Designer 4 also has a neat feature of allowing a right click on any given table and exporting the SQL code for only that table into your cache, giving you the ability to paste the code (with CTRL + V if you are using Windows PC) into a text file or directly into the SQL input text area of your PHPMyAdmin console.
This feature is useful if you are only after updating one table in your database or do not want to export the whole lot into the SQL source code file for whatever reason.
Now it is also possible to sync in your DB Designer 4 with the local version of MySQL running on your machine and therefore have the visual model work directly with the database and update it, however we have not used this feature, hence cannot comment about its validity and how well or badly it works.
We tend to use DB Designer 4 on larger database driven projects where quick and ongoing database design modelling is required.
We export the SQL source code into the server based MySQL database and work with it from there on as that seems to be the most convenient way to work with this kind of modelling tool.
DB Designer is very nice tool to have in the tools arsenal and it is a shame it is the only one of such kind for MySQL purposes that we know of.
Another important fact to mention is that the people from DB Designer are working on another version of this kind of visual tool for MySQL through MySQL company itself.
The new product is called MySQL WorkBench and at the time of writing this article it is only in the alpha preview version.
We are really looking forward to using MySQL Workbench in the future and hope it will made available as a free download from MySQL web site.
For now we are sticking with using DB Designer 4, which is a very descent tool for large MySQL database work.
