Despite my job as a web developer/designer, I often tell people I'm not a nerd. I like to think of myself as some sort of pseudo-nerd. Perhaps a nerd with an appreciation for aesthetics. Perhaps I'm just a lazy nerd because I would much prefer to work with a nice pretty interface than to stare at a blinking green rectangle in the terminal.
This is no different when it comes to managing my Drupal databases. My knowledge of MySQL is not as sharp as it could be so I much prefer using a GUI app. In the past I have been using an app called YourSQL which has served me well, although I fear that it's on it's last legs. Originally written on PowerPC architecture, this little app was left for dead until a kind soul ported it so we could use it on Intel Macs.
Now, don't get me wrong, there are a few well supported GUI Mac mysql apps out there. There's Navicat, and the MySQL GUI Tools. But every one that I come across seems to be unnecessarily complex and they just don't 'feel' like mac apps.
Enter Sequel Pro.
It started out life as CocoaMySQL but this was abandoned by project founders Abi Beckert and Matt Langtree and was reengineered to become Sequel Pro. It sports a super smooth, well organised interface with very familiar 'mac like' features. See the screenshots, I think you'll agree.
Each new connection opens in separate window so that you can have multiple connections at once, zang!
Table admin is a breeze. You can check, repair, analyze, optimize, flush and checksum your tables without having to remember a single line of code. Clicking on the Table info tab gives you all sorts of useful information about your selected table including the syntax that it would take to recreate that table, should you require it. The table history is another nice feature if you have your head deep in your tables and you forget where you just were, you can navigate backwards and forwards like a web browser.
It has a nice little query editor with syntax highlighting and code completion and few other niceties you would only expect from a more robust code editor. It also has a 'Query Favorites' and 'Query History' menu which gives you the ability to save commonly used snippets and quick access to all the queries you have run recently.
One of the handiest features that is new with the 0.96 release is the SSH tunneling option. After recently becoming familiar with the concept via the command line, with the help of a few hair pulliings (arrg!!), I was very pleased to see what was once a hassle in the terminal could be achieved simply with a few clicks.
There are plenty more features in Sequel Pro that I haven't used which leads me to believe that it's a lot more powerful than I will ever need building Drupal sites. It's nice to see an app that has loads of muscle under the hood but doesn't let that get in the way of a clean, easy to use interface.
So many nice features but probably the nicest is the fact that it's free. That's right, you heard me correctly, Sequel Pro is open source and freely distributed. Of course those of us with a conscience might consider donating, but downloading, using it and spreading the word about this great MySQL app will help too.
