PhpMyAdmin Turns 15

http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/15-years.php

by jentulman • 13 years ago

171 111 13 years ago

ohwp• 13 years ago

I don't use PhpMyAdmin a lot, only when there is no other option available (I prefer SQLyog). But lately I got very frustrated by the interface changes.

Then I discovered the option to enable the old theme again. A great tool!

cbg0• 13 years ago

There's another free alternative called HeidiSQL which is pretty good. http://www.heidisql.com/

Luyt2• 13 years ago

Thanks for the tip! This seems to be an interesting alternative to MSSQL Server Studio.

Adirael• 13 years ago

I use SequelPro (OS X, Free). It's fast and lightweight, it can tunnel through SSH.

jentulman• 13 years ago

I'm a big fan too, not only is it a nice mysql interface it's a really nice example of generally well designed software. Lot's of lovely little touches in the way it remembers the state of various views as you're working with it make it really hassle free.

eddieroger• 13 years ago

Tunneling is my favorite feature. Being able to keep both unnecessary services from running (phpMyAdmin) and disabling SSH passwords make me a happy solo sysadmin. Not that I wouldn't run phpMyAdmin if I had to, but since it's just me and people I administer on my boxes, I can use the tools I want, and keep active code to a minimum.

Luyt2• 13 years ago

I wish SequelPro could have multiple SQL Query tabs open.

joebeetee• 13 years ago

+1 for Sequel Pro - it's amazing. Makes it far too easy to edit the DB directly instead of using migrations :)

Edit: 'to' => 'too'

turshija• 13 years ago

Amazing indeed, too bad it doesn't have Windows and Linux versions too, since I often change environments so I always need my laptop next to me. I tried many MySQL GUIs but not a single one was awesome like SequelPro :(

pilif• 13 years ago

Editing the schema directly instead of using migrations (where you get your changes source-controlled) is a good thing why exactly?

Argorak2• 13 years ago

If there is any project I'd be tempted to be snarky about, it's PhpMyAdmin (although last time I used it, it was 2006). From an administration perspective, it was often a hassle, especially in its beginnings. It is a very successful tool and for a while had the same reputation as wordpress: being a pretty remote shell.

But what PhpMyAdmin illustrates very well is how important tools can be to environments/communities. For a while, the presence of PhpMyAdmin was what gave PHP an edge over many other environments: here's a tool that gives you (and tech-savvy people in your company) insight into your database, allows you to do changes and some bit of backup visually instead of fighting with the command line. And, if you develop on PHP, you don't even have to install anything additional on your platform. It made running PHP hosting without shell access feasable.

davedx• 13 years ago

I still use it daily on my PHP projects, out of choice and out of other peoples'/hosting companies' choices.

I dislike what happened to the UX, though; definitely a case of "if it ain't broke, don't fk with it". Still a great tool though. I'm always lost on postgre projects...

pestaa2• 13 years ago

I found both phpPgAdmin and PgAdmin III superior to phpMyAdmin in many aspects. And there's always DBeaver to handle any relational database you can probably imagine.

Although I must say I've yet to see an SQL client that comes close to HeidiSQL (Windows only, MySQL+MSSQL only). (Edit: "MySQL only" was wrong.)

bdc• 13 years ago

It's easy to dump on PMA, but what it was built for, it did (and mostly, does) excellently.

When I used PMA for the first time I was a very young programmer, and it really amazed me that such a tool could exist. Oddly enough, this was a really inspirational piece of software for me.

superuser23• 13 years ago

What do you use for MySQL development then? I usually find handwriting SQL queries to be obnoxiously verbose and I don't like the security implications of letting mysql listen on non-localhost interfaces (i.e. for an OSX administration tool).

PavlovsCat• 13 years ago

personally ( = db amateur) I like this a lot: https://code.google.com/p/sqlyog/downloads/list

matsur• 13 years ago

SSH tunneling from your desktop to your MySQL host and connecting you admin client through that should alleviate the concerns around exposing 3306 to the world.

Arnor• 13 years ago

MySQL CLI via SSH or MySQL Workbench.

lukifer• 13 years ago

For simpler tasks, I find adminer works very well: http://www.adminer.org/ Installation is as easy as uploading a single file. One advantage of that is you can mitigate any security risk by simply adding "die;" to the top of the file when you don't need it.

snowwrestler2• 13 years ago

The most secure setup for administrative services is to whitelist their ports by IP address. For example port 22 (SSH) on our servers can only be hit by known-good IP addresses. You can do the same for MySQL's port, or use an SSH tunnel to hit MySQL through localhost.

Argorak2• 13 years ago

I don't use MySQL anymore and I use command line clients everywhere. But that wasn't the point.

Also, sequel (rubygem) comes with an awesome console to write SQL queries in.

kaolinite5• 13 years ago

I've been working on a PhpMyAdmin-like tool recently called Schema (http://github.com/timdavies/schema). It's a single-page app (Node.JS/Backbone) and I've had quite a bit of positive feedback from people testing it - much faster than PhpMyAdmin, nicer UI, etc. There's a lot left to do on it (missing critical features at the moment such as inserting rows..) however I'm unable to work on it for roughly a month as I've taken a new job and need to learn some new stuff for it. If anyone wants to help out, you'd be more than welcome (will give commit access after a few pull requests) :-)

anaphor2• 13 years ago

Would you mind if I forked it and rewrote it in Scheme? (Seriously).

kaolinite5• 13 years ago

Haha, of course not :-) Good luck!

unimpressive• 13 years ago

How do you write non-trivial programs in scheme? (Seriously. No really I'm actually asking.)

Rexxar• 13 years ago

It looks nice but you should add a license. Especially if you accept external contributions. (personally, I like MIT license)

kaolinite5• 13 years ago

Good point, thanks. I've added MIT.

johnyzee2• 13 years ago

We developed a similar thing, but for PostgreSQL [1][2]. Also a single page JavaScript app with a good UI and fairly full-featured.

[1] http://www.teampostgresql.com

[2] Demo: http://teampostgresql.herokuapp.com/ (runs on a free Heroku account so a bit slow, and demo users sometimes mess up the db)

iagooar• 13 years ago

OMG looks like a 90's Windows application.

kaolinite5• 13 years ago

Nice! Certainly looks to have a lot more features than mine right now ;-)

andrewaylett• 13 years ago

Looks like it could be useful, but I can't find mention of the license on the website.

vamega• 13 years ago

Looks quite nice. What is it built with? I also couldn't find any mention of a license on the site.

BaconJuice2• 13 years ago

how about a demo link for me to take it out on a test drive? :)

kaolinite5• 13 years ago

I'm planning to get one sorted soon, just very busy at the moment and don't have much time to dedicate to the project. I've got the domain getschema.com and will put something on there when I get the chance.

mordae2• 13 years ago

I prefer the extremely lightweight Adminer: http://www.adminer.org/en/

It works great for MySQL, SQLite and can be used for some basic PostgreSQL work too.

no_gravity• 13 years ago

The headline says "Database management in single PHP file".

Is this correct english? Im not a native english speaker. To me it sounds like it should read "in a single PHP file".

Same with "Replace phpMyAdmin by Adminer and you will get tidier user interface"

ibrow• 13 years ago

Yes, it is a bit strange. I'm a native speaker and I would have said "in a single PHP file" too.

martin-adams• 13 years ago

I'd say the word 'single' is redundant as it a PHP file. How about "Database management in a PHP file"?

But then it doesn't have as much impact emphasising the simplicity of it.

mordae2• 13 years ago

It's from Jakub Vrána, a Czech developer. Czenglish sucks.

pionar2• 13 years ago

A lot of non-native English speakers have difficulty with articles (a, an, the, etc.).

jakubvrana• 13 years ago

I've added "a" between "in" and "single", it started sounding weird to me some time ago as well. Thanks for the suggestion. Can you please propose a correct wording for the second sentence?

kyriakos2• 13 years ago

adminer rocks. Drop 1 file and you can manage your DB. Especially useful when you quickly want to look at a client's site's DB before getting your hands dirty.

uses• 13 years ago

Adminer is a huge upgrade from phpMyAdmin.

The "single file" feature makes installation and updating easy, but the features and usability improvements over phpMyAdmin seal the deal.

It basically fixes every annoyance of phpMyAdmin. Zero config, saved logins, no iframes, consistent and predictable UI. Love this program.

mstrem• 13 years ago

It may be just me, but I personally would not mention the lines of code as a success story metric.

I feel like lots of line of code usually means bloat.

That aside, I often use phpMyAdmin and it is a great tool for those quick little edits! And if you know already about SQL then it is really easy to use.

mataug• 13 years ago

I wouldn't necessarily dismiss lots of lines of code as bloat, but In this case you are probably right.

ihsw• 13 years ago

Indeed, it's like measuring the quality of a plane by its weight, but it's not hard to gauge "too much" weight.

VLM• 13 years ago

if you know already about SQL then it is really easy to use.

If you already know SQL then its much faster to type a line into the CLI than click the mouse 50000 times in a web gui. However, I do use it so when I'm on call I can walk someone thru a simple password reset, or something of similar level, over the phone rather than spend 45 minutes find and plug in the laptop, VPN in, do 15 seconds of work, then shut down everything and put it away until next time. Someone completely incapable of finding the semicolon key on a keyboard can usually none the less be successfully talked thru clicking the mouse 5000 times on a web page.

brokenparser• 13 years ago

MySQL Workbench trumps the other tools for managing MySQL, but for quick web access I prefer Adminer. It's easier to set up, appears less cluttered and fast.

kyriakos2• 13 years ago

I think phpMyAdmin v4 is a backward move. They got rid of frames in favor of a more ajaxified UI but it is running many times slower than the <3.5 versions. I understand using Frames is supposed to be bad but in this case they offered a better user experience.

ceejayoz• 13 years ago

Not only is it slower, but it breaks down massively for those of us with good numbers of databases and tables. It feels like it was developed and tested with someone's single database, three table blog engine.

dcc12• 13 years ago

Navicat is infinitely more useful for mysql database administration, especially with the option to login via ssh

pestaa2• 13 years ago

Why would you need SSH login option in phpMyAdmin? It was designed for single-server setups where the interpreter sits next to the database.

yogo3• 13 years ago

You don't need it for phpMyAdmin. The comment was mentioning the ssh tunnel feature as an advantage in desktop clients like navicat, which allows you to access the database while still running it on localhost.

lilpirate• 13 years ago

The new AJAXified interface is slower and more inconsistent. The inline edit feature never works and has a very subtle feedback. But hey, it's ubiquitous and it gets the job done. However, I've started using SequelPro on OS X as a replacement which works pretty great.

sehrope3• 13 years ago

This is one of the (many) apps we looked at when we started working on JackDB[1]. It's a database client in your browser. Rather than just a table interface though, JackDB is a full featured query editor and even includes scrolling result sets.

Besides MySQL, we also support PostgreSQL (what we use in house), Oracle and MS SQL Server.

[1] http://www.jackdb.com/

aram• 13 years ago

For Yii fans, there is a similar project called Chive [1].

[1] http://www.chive-project.com/

debacle• 13 years ago

Chive is excellent software, Yii fan or not. It has bugs, but the few bugs I encounter with it are worth the pain to not have to fuss with phpMyAdmin.

ck2• 13 years ago

I'd appreciate it more if they'd just stop doing

     SELECT COUNT(*)

on innodb tables (which do not handle that query well with many rows). Yes there is a workaround but it is flawed.

Kiro• 13 years ago

What should you use on InnoDB tables instead?

bcoates• 13 years ago

Get a quick estimate out of SHOW TABLE STATUS

bstar77• 13 years ago

I get quite a bit of phpMyAdmin nostalgia when I'm going through my server logs.

sehrope3• 13 years ago

Yeah I think we all do. In fact not too long after posting a link to our app in this thread I got another one:

    Sep  9 12:58:29 [41.66.xxx.xxx] GET /phpMyAdmin/translators.html [1 ms]

jscheel• 13 years ago

I too can hate on phpmyadmin and suggest superior alternatives. However, just let it sink in for one second how incredibly successful this tool has been, regardless of its detriments. Most of us would kill for this kind of household name recognition. It was at the right place at the right time, for sure, but I think there's probably something we can still learn from them.

mithras• 13 years ago

Do tell about the superior alternative, I still have to use phpmyadmin sometimes.

yareally• 13 years ago

MySQL workbench is a good alternative. I wish there was one similar to it for postgresql that was also native.

http://www.mysql.com/products/workbench/

insraq• 13 years ago

I like SQL Buddy (http://sqlbuddy.com/) or Chive (http://www.chive-project.com/)

jaredstenquist• 13 years ago

I use Sequel Pro, but it's an OSX app, not a php alternative to PhpMyAdmin.

steelaz• 13 years ago

If it's not your first time touching database, I would recommend Adminer (http://www.adminer.org/). No installation, single PHP file.

yogo3• 13 years ago

The mysql command line client is a superior alternative IMO. Like most things on the command line you are able to more much faster instead of having to deal navigate the GUI. Don't get me wrong phpMyAdmin is definitely easier to use for the average user and if you are just so blessed with having to work on a project that's on shared hosting it might be your only option, but even then I'm usually on the SQL tab.

navneetpandey• 13 years ago

lifesaver!!

BaconJuice2• 13 years ago

Is anything similar to PhpMyAdmin that's made for MongoDB? Been looking for something decent with no luck =/

tehwebguy• 13 years ago

phpMyAdmin gets dumped on a lot but it was a big help for me when I was just learning to write my own queries. The way it shows you the query that powers each action you run is a great learning tool.

marveller• 13 years ago

http://mywebsql.net/ ia an interesting alternative.

adkatrit• 13 years ago

kill it with fire

ing33k• 13 years ago

if any one is looking for lightweight alternatives, checkout SQL Buddy (http://sqlbuddy.com/) .

noeleon• 13 years ago

Wow.... 15 years! Working at a hosting provider way back when I would die a little inside every time someone asked me to install phpmyadmin for their databases.

I'm sure it's come a long way (at least I hope it has).

tuantruong• 13 years ago

I used to use it a lot, but now that I got on to navicat, I never gone back to it anymore.

kpommerenke• 13 years ago

I use it a lot for local development, but wouldn't install it on a production server for security reasons. However, if you run commands in phpMyAdmin, it actually gives you the SQL code for your desired action, which you can then copy and paste to the command line on your production server.

wehadfun• 13 years ago

I remember when you were only maybe 5 or 6 years old. I was maybe 21 and I used you to get a MySQL database in shape so that I could create a submission tool for programming contest. One of my first web apps! Congrats PHPMyAdmin on turning 15!

louwrentius2• 13 years ago

When I was a security auditor, finding a PHPMyAdmin instance would make my day. Somehow, the customer would not share in my joy. How peculiar.

meowface• 13 years ago

To be fair, nowadays phpmyadmin is mostly only good for escalating privileges, not obtaining them in the first place. I don't think they've had a serious pre-auth flaw in a while.

louwrentius2• 13 years ago

In most cases it wasn't even PHPMyAdmin's fault per se, but the people not taking 5 minutes to harden it or upgrade it. In many cases, no offence to the makers of this tool, finding a phpmyadmin instance (especially not up-to-date) was a tell tale sign of trouble ahead. Phpmyadmin has caused trouble for people you can't even begin to imagine (ok you probably can). Oh the memories.

ibstudios• 13 years ago

PhpMyAdmin has saved my butt many times with a bad joomla install or when I need to output sql. I mostly use navicat these days when I need to touch mysql.

ryen• 13 years ago

I don't use PhpMyAdmin but my servers get hit regularly from vulnerability-bots looking for holes in phpmyadmin/*.php pages.

Are there a lot of known security issues outstanding?

MichaelGG• 13 years ago

I don't know, but anything PHP usually does. Even if it didn't, it'd still be a good target as a lot of people are gonna put on some weak password as they don't realise how publicly visible it is.

tn13• 13 years ago

phpmyadmin is not the best mysql frontend one can have but it is simple to install, easy to use and makes many things incredibly simple.

For example for my mobile backends, I use only phpmyadmin to populate the data and use rails scaffolds to provide json outout to the mobile clients.

Diamons• 13 years ago

PhpMyAdmin has been great. It's really one of the only reasons I was able to learn PHP + MySQL in high school. It's quick, simple, and convenient on Windows.

homersapien• 13 years ago

PhpMyAdmin has turned into an utter mess. I use - and most definitely rely on it - daily. But every version since 2.X has been a step back. The AJAX in the latest version is disastrous. Everything about it is slower than the older frame versions. Worse yet, even simple tasks such as renaming a table or column will cause it to go non-responsive.

PhpMyAdmin Turns 15

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