PhpMyAdmin Turns 15

[Argorak]

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]

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...

[bdc]

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.

[superuser2]

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).

[jscheel]

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]

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

[kaolinite]

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) :-)

[johnyzee]

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)

[anaphor]

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

[Rexxar]

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

[BaconJuice]

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

[mordae]

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]

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"

[uses]

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.

[kyriakos]

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.

[ohwp]

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!

[joebeetee]

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

Edit: 'to' => 'too'

[Adirael]

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

[cbg0]

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

[ck2]

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]

What should you use on InnoDB tables instead?

[kyriakos]

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]

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.

[tehwebguy]

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.

[kpommerenke]

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.

[lilpirate]

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.

[mstrem]

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.

[VLM]

>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.

[mataug]

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

[ryen]

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]

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.

[Diamons]

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.

[brokenparser]

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.

[sehrope]

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]

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

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

[debacle]

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.

[homersapien]

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.

[marveller]

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

[wehadfun]

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!