Why I prefer SQL Buddy over PHPMyAdmin

I’ve been a PHPMyAdmin user for years now and I’ve embraced it because there didn’t seem to be a better solution, unless you love the command-line, that is. Well those days are over since I found out about SQL Buddy with it’s slick user interface. I switched instantly.

The interface

SQL Buddy just looks beautiful. I’ve used PHPMyAdmin with the ClearView theme for ages now and it doens’t come near the cleanliness SQL Buddy offers. And in my case less distractions equals higher productivity. The interface itself is very intuitive and easy to use.

User management

If you’re not on a managed hosting platform you might like to have full control over your user management in a nifty interface. SQL Buddy delivers this!

Lightweight

PHPMyAdmin weighs in a whopping 3.5 Mb which is kind of ridiculous compared to SQL Buddy’s 320 Kb. I know there’s a big difference in features but if you don’t need much you shouldn’t have to download much. Installation is also a breeze, just unzip it to your server and you’re ready to go. No configuration whatsoever.

Exporting

PHPMyAdmin allows you to download database exports in many formats, SQL Buddy just offers a text export. As a developer I don’t mind the lack of other options since I manage my backups via cronjobs. So this is not really a thumbs up or down for SQL Buddy but I thought I’d mention it before someone starts a flamewar over it in the comments.

Conclusion

Go download SQL Buddy and check it out. I personally think it’ll be the next best thing for web-based database management. You’ll be amazed by it’s ease-of-use and trivial installation.

23 Replies to “Why I prefer SQL Buddy over PHPMyAdmin”

  1. I dont really like webinterfaces
    i preffer MySQL Workbench or at home the free Version of Navicat
    (wich has a nice feature to tunnel sql command through a single php script)

    1. For me it’s the other way around. I don’t like desktop apps because they force me to set a wildcard as the users’ host on the server because my IP-address changes so frequently.

  2. I tried this once and found it really slow when you have lot of databases. In my case I had about 100 databases and page load took few minutes.

    For Mac users I prefer Sequel Pro. It’s native client so you can’t really compare it with phpMyAdmin and SQL Buddy.

    1. I’ve used Sequel Pro and really liked it!

      I like to have a maximum of 40 databases ( or 40 domains ) per server because any more really tend to have an impact on the servers’ performance. Again this is just for shared hosting.

  3. I long wanted to distribute a proper SQL tool alongside my application. But because I’m producing BSDL/PD code was worried some GNU fanboi would harass me later on (regardless of actual code mix). But since SQL Buddy is now under an open license, that’s no worry anymore. Plus: it has a way cleaner codebase. Cons: Excessive translations are not needed for developer tools.

  4. there are also phpPgAdmin for postgresql.
    it’s not so beautiful than phpMyAdmin but good interface with great options

  5. For a quick tool to manage mysql database via GUI, i think adminer is the best one!

    Upload only one file, run it and login! All’s done!

    Of course, it’s not as many features as Phpmyadmin! But the problem is a quick GUI is just for some basic task when working with database!

    For important or advance task, i do via command line!
    Adminer support some basic feature,..And it’s enough!
    PHPMYADMIn is just too bloat!

  6. Hi there !
    I also prefer SQLBuddy over phpmyAdmin for web-based mySQl administration.
    But, my favorite tool has to be NaviCat … it’s really awesome how streamlined it is.

    As Luc says.. in a lot of cases, it means I will have to add % as a host in order to connect remotely .. but I can live with that (since I do tend to use complex passwords).

    Oli

  7. I used to use phpMyAdmin on my shared hosting just because it was default until I found SQL Buddy. I really adore it for its cute UI. But one difference is that I use SQL Buddy with CUBRID Database now. Recently SQL Buddy was adopted by the CUBRID Database (http://www.cubrid.org/about_cubrid_web_query) as well. I think it says a lot about trust to SQL Buddy. CUBRID modified SQL Buddy to work with its database and called it CUBRID WebQuery. There is no difference at all in code, as I checked, except for the SQL statements and php funciton calls optimized for CUBRID.

  8. Soy cliente de servicios de hosting y el proveedor ya ha migrado totalmente a SQL Buddy.

    Antes se usaba PhpMyAdmin, creo que el cambio es muy bueno, SQL Buddy funciona perfecto y además su interfaz es mas atractiva.

    Coincido con los comentarios acerca del idioma, con ingles hubiera sido suficiente.

    Saludos.

      1. Someone once told me “this is internet, you can use any language”, and chinese is very hard… haha! i’m from Argentina. Very nice web. ¡Adiós!

  9. Apart from export.. I think sqlbuddy is much nicer looking and a better web based mysql admin tool than phpmyadmin.. they should work on export though.. A much nicer feature will be to export the DB to scripts for other databases like oracle etc.

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