Improvements In The Latest Release

Faster Loading

A few weeks ago I began thinking about how I could improve load times. Yahoo! has a document online called Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site, which is quite good. I used that document to make several changes in the 1.3 release of SQL Buddy that resulted in a faster application.

The first step that I took was to use gzip compression for serving css and javascript files. This brought significant improvements, especially when loading pages with an empty cache. The next thing that I looked into was reducing the number of http requests. Even when browsers have a cached copy of a file, they still ping the server to check for a newer copy of the file. Therefore, the more files that the browser has to check, the slower the app loads.

After performing these changes (and a few others) I could tell that the application was more responsive. I performed a few benchmarks to see what the difference was. The charts illustrates the difference in loading times between the latest version and the 1.2.9 release.

As you can see, pages are now loading in about 50-75% of the time that they used to take. Note that this time is how long it takes to load all html, css, javascript, and images. I was surprised that Firefox was able to load the entire page in just over a second! I should also mention that these tests were performed with a remote server – if you are using the app locally you will see even quicker loading times.

SQLite Support

With the 1.3 release, experimental support for SQLite has been added. If you have SQLite installed on your system, the login screen will let you choose between logging in to MySQL and SQLite. It still needs tweaking and I would love to hear your feedback.

In Conclusion

This project is now hosted on Google Code at http://code.google.com/p/sql-buddy/. If you are interested in contributing, contact me and I will get it set up. There is a list of issues available on the Google Code site, so if you just want to help out, that would be a really good place to start.

I am really excited by how much this project has grown over the past few months. It was first released in the middle of May, about 4 months ago. Since then, many of you have contacted me to report a bug, suggest a feature, or simply say that you enjoy the app. The interest from all over the world has been surprising. As I was putting the finishing touches on the 1.3 release, I watched as the total number of downloads crossed 10,000. I am surprised that the project has received this much attention, and I would like to thank everyone that has given it a chance. This project is just getting started ;)

20 Responses to “Improvements In The Latest Release”

  1. Bart Says:

    Hi,
    Excellent piece of software. I loved it from the start. Simple and very user-friendly.

    Thank god, I don’t have to use phpmyadmin so much anymore. It feels so… 1990.

    Keep up the good work (and don’t forget to put a PayPal sponsor button on your site).

    cheers, Bart

  2. Richard Henry Says:

    This is really a fantastic application. I’ll push out some tweets and start telling everyone about it. Best of luck, and keep up with the development.

    Richard

  3. david Says:

    I keep getting login screen after i login

    Just reloads same screen

    using Litespeed Web Server

  4. Konstantin Says:

    hi,
    Suppressing errors is not good :)

    I tried to use it but after entering login and password I had got blank screen, no errors. Enabling error_reporting and display_errors didn’t help. So I found why I’d got blank screen… I have no mysql module (using pdo_mysql).

    Could not open and SQLite database. So there is some issues with this program, BUT it’s interesting project.

    cheers, Konstantin

  5. Henry Says:

    Just wanted to say thanks for the great app.

    I have replaced phpMyAdmin on most of our servers – i still need it around for some View stuff, which sqlbuddy does not seem to fully support yet, but other than that it’s fantastic. So much nicer having a clean interface to work with.

    Keep up the great work :)

  6. Leo Says:

    Thanks!!!!

    Your GREAT work really help me a lot.

    Our server will crash while running the phpMyAdmin. Luckily I found SQL Buddy here!!!

  7. Art Says:

    Shows what a nice job someone can do with a clean slate. phpMyAdmin does the job but SqlBuddy does it very elegantly. Good job! Thanks for the effort (and put up a PayPal donate button please…)

  8. Jiri Barton Says:

    Wow wow wow!

    This is my application of the month. It is very easy to use and looking very attractive. I am thinking of replacing phpMyAdmin on all our servers.

    Have you thought about having it packaged for Ubuntu?

  9. Calvin Says:

    Jiri,

    I am not very familiar with Ubuntu. I depend on satisfied users to creatively distribute SQL Buddy. For example, someone created a port for FreeBSD: http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=126646

  10. Stuart Loxton Says:

    Awesome project, I’ve been thinking of doing something similar for ages but decided just before taking the dive would look for something with similar goals and here I find this. I would love to contribute, are you using SVN on google code or some other solution?

  11. admin Says:

    Stuart, you can check out the project on Google Code: http://code.google.com/p/sql-buddy/

  12. Alexwebmaster Says:

    Hello webmaster
    I would like to share with you a link to your site
    write me here preonrelt@mail.ru

  13. Elbert Angeli Says:

    Wow that is an very informative blog entry . I like your website. Maybe you should write more articles of these type.

  14. Rob Mangiafico Says:

    What do we have to change in config.php to make it work with an SQLite database? I cannot get it to connect to the SQLite file…

  15. dontknow Says:

    This tool is great, please keep up the good work and thank you.

    But the SQLite support doesn’t work very well. A SQLite 2.x Database works, but when trying to open a 3.x, I always get the “There was a problem logging you in.” Message.

    And let me say: Much of the Interface isn’t supported with SQLite but it still gets Displayed. At example the column data types, half of them are not available. If you select these and create a new table, sqlbuddy won’t notify you and the table won’t get created. Still today, after 3 Years.

    But your tool is simply the best for SQLite, can you please improve the SQLite support? I expect you are using PDO (but didn’t took a look at the code), so it shouldn’t be a hard task.

    Thank you.

  16. Mangaan Says:

    What can I say more download and unzip it and you are ready to go
    what a pleasure to work with !!!!

    Thank you !!!!

  17. lordvonfanel Says:

    It was awesome to users. But there is slight difference with PMA: it does not display queries you have executed unlike PMA.

    But it was great for rapid deployment though…

    Thanks…

  18. Ernestina Strauf Says:

    helpful post

  19. Lea Says:

    “”Its every time good to learn tips like you helping for blog posting. As I just started posting comments quest of blog and fa‡ade quandary of lots of rejections. I think about your tittle reminiscent of would be valuable for me. I will explode you be aware if its put to good in compensation me too.”

  20. SEO Sydney Says:

    Not necessarily correct if an Search engine marketing corporation is ranking larger than other businesses is better. However it is a excellent strategy to show leadership inside the sector. Sometime is difficult to rank higher than other businesses because of high variety of back links more than the many years and it may expense allot to outrank these companies an I’m saying six figure quantity to outrank these providers. Nonetheless I see if a young provider is out ranking these dominant organizations then it’s a good way to show leadership above the older firms. As I advised earlier it isn’t the age or knowledge it truly is the performance that matters.

Leave a Reply