What’s next?
When this project first started, I released a lot of updates in rapid succession. After that, I got busy with other endeavors and the project wasn’t updated for several months. During this stagnant period, I received an email from a user who was basically wondering if the project was still alive. This is part of my response:
“…development has kinda stalled. I am really happy with where the application is right now, although it would be nice if it could keep moving forward.”
The last few releases have been mainly concerned with bug fixes. However, I am still interested in adding new features. This is where I need your help: What features would you most like to see? What can be improved?
February 21st, 2009 at 5:56 am
Having some kind of export output compression (bzip2, gzip), would be useful when dealing with databases of several hundred megabytes.
Making the left navigation frame resizable would definitely be cool, because unwanted line breaks make the table listing unnecessarily long.
There is also some inconsistency regarding this frame on “structure” pages. As you can see on this screenshot (http://imagesload.net/img/sqbud.png), its scrollbar doesn’t end at the bottom of the visible area (this is the case on “browse” pages) but rather on the end of the “physical” page, so I have to scroll down the page, and then again the navigation frame, if I want to reach the bottommost table.
Overall, SQL Buddy seems exceptional cool to me, and if I found anything that kept me from using it over pma, I’ll sure tell you.
February 27th, 2009 at 6:16 am
I miss the option to copy a table (including an option to only copy the structure, or structure+data or only copy the data). Could you please consider to add this option?
In general SQL Buddy is promising. Keep up the good work.
March 1st, 2009 at 3:56 am
If I click on some table-cells, I miss the option to select (checkbox) the table-line.
But it’s usually better than PMA!
March 3rd, 2009 at 3:09 pm
I’m installing this right now. I think it will be a better, lighter alternative to phpMyAdmin for my clients to use. They need something that’s not so “scary” to deal with. Is this theme-able? Can you turn on-and-off certain features? That would be my goal, so that I can show database objects to my clients without bells and whistles that they can’t use / don’t need / are intimidated by.
Thank you for your hard work.
March 3rd, 2009 at 7:23 pm
Grey, those are really good suggestions. Personally, I don’t have very many databases (therefore I don’t run into the scrolling issues as often) so it is very helpful to hear feedback from someone who does. I will definitely work on making the left menu resizable; I could see that being a helpful feature. When the scrollbar doesn’t end at the bottom of the page, that is definitely a nuisance for a user. This problem mainly occurs on the structure page (as you described). It would be possible to add a scrollbar on the right side and remove the scroll bar from the physical page. I had considered doing this before, but it didn’t feel quite right. I will have to revisit this idea and see what I come up with.
Fritz, table copying is definitely useful. I remember using it in my pma days. I will see if it can be added to the interface.
Marius, clicking on table rows always felt weird to me. I wanted to keep selection easy though, so I decided to keep the checkboxes on the left side no matter how far you scroll to the right. A checkbox is a smaller target than an entire row, but I still think it works well.
March 6th, 2009 at 9:21 am
Thanks for work!
Add please support for “default value CURRENT_TIMESTAMP” for TIMESTAMP type fields
Good Luck!
March 17th, 2009 at 8:29 am
Support to view, modify and create foreign key constraints would be a must for me to consider moving away from phpMyAdmin. I could always do it by hand with a query, but phpMyAdmin’s relation view is very useful. Also, when you have many databases, you must frequently scroll down the list of databases just to see the list of tables in the currently selected database. I kinda like how phpMyAdmin hides all other databases once you select one.
Don’t get me wrong, I think sqlBuddy has a lot of good potential, and I definitely enjoy the ajax in it a lot more than the constant refreshing that phpMyadmin does.
March 18th, 2009 at 8:41 am
A small but very effective add-on would be: auto-width of the data columns. I have a lot of columns with only a small number in it, still the columns is pretty wide, leaving lots of room unused. On tables with many cols this means the view is unnecessarily wide. If this would shrink to the largest data field, this would be very nice.
I know I can adjust cols easily, but with many cols and snapping back to the default width on opening a new table, this is too much effort.
Just an idea.
SQLBuddy is nearly perfect, beautifully designed, much more friendly and usable as pma.
March 25th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
SQLBuddy looks pretty good! Much better interface than phpmyadmin.
How about support for triggers?
March 25th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
A forum on the website would be nice.
http://getvanilla.com/
March 27th, 2009 at 11:53 am
I haven’t used sqlbuddy much yet, but find it to be an interesting alternative to phpMyAdmin. Mainly thanks to it being faster.
One thing that would make it _much_ faster in many scenarios: editing in place in the “browse” mode.
Please take a look at the demo of the jeditable plugin for jquery (I know you’re using mootools, but I’m sure there must be an equivalent). http://www.appelsiini.net/projects/jeditable/default.html . Click on the “Click me if you dare!” string for an example input.
March 28th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
In the Browse view, it would be nice if you could select individual rows for deletion, editing, or what-not. At the moment it just lists all the rows, with no options.
March 28th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Actually, I take it back. It must be a browser issues that’s preventing me from seeing the check boxes and options.
March 29th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Can you add some thinks in the “edit table” and “edit database” pages. Like moving table, set the AI, or other options witch are in PMA and are easy to add.
March 29th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
I appreciate these suggestions. Keep ‘em coming.
Unfortunately, I don’t have time to write a response to each suggestion. However, when a feature you suggested makes it into a future release, consider that a response
April 2nd, 2009 at 7:37 am
Hello. Thank you for a great work to make a mysql web frontend. It really saved me from going crazy to find a decent skin for pma to live with it, and yet pma looks a bit dull, but this looks great and acts modern and does the job right and is featureful.
I’ve just even figured it supports sqlite (sounds like not many use this with sql buddy?) and I was even more delighted about it that I have all the development files on a local machine and I had to have a separate sqlite viewer app just to view them till now but it seems the sqlite support is somewhat broken and whenever I open a database it does not list any tables (sqlite command line shows, so the tables should be good) but it does log me in and it doesn’t show a logout button, so I have to delete the cookie to get out of it. Hope sqlite support gets better too and I can’t go back to anything else for the task.
April 7th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Hello,
I just discovered SQL Buddy and so far I like it a lot. What I am really missing is the option to Gzip your export when you want to save it as a file; also the file saving did not work for me, but I didn’t take the time to check out why, yet.
Thanks and I’ll keep watching!
Chris
April 7th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Hey!
Just wanna say thank you for a great product!
Featurewise I’d like to see the ability to grant access to wildcard databases (username\_%).
Keep up the good work. I’ve already switched from pma…
April 8th, 2009 at 10:17 pm
The reason sqlite interface didn’t work was you checked whether the PHP had sqlite library version 2 or 3 using sqlite_libversion, which is not what PDO’s driver will use. PDO has its own driver which can be used for either sqlite3 and sqlite2 as of PHP 5.1.
And it’s supposed to change the driver according to what database it’s opening and not what the server is capable of. (Of course, lack of certain sqlite library is a problem, but forcing it to open as sqlite2 on sqlite3 will bring problems.)
So, I think it’s better to have sqlite2 and sqlite3 option at the login screen instead. (Unless there is a way to determine the database version of a sqlite database file automatically [Like 'file' command on UNIX, not sure how on PHP. At worst, could read the first bit of the file header and determine.]. And give error if the server doesn’t support either of the one chosen.)
April 12th, 2009 at 10:55 am
great work! i love it! PMA is an eyesore, and slow, while this is fast and slick. sweet mate!
April 21st, 2009 at 8:28 am
There is one major thing i use often in phpmyadmin, and that is “Search”, i would really like to see this option where you can search trough tables etc.
Thanks for a great product and i really hope to see this feature in the future.
April 29th, 2009 at 7:02 am
I miss the option to edit for example autoincrement to a field after it is created.
May 1st, 2009 at 11:04 am
SQL Buddy is definitely a great contender for the throne, considering it’s mostly been developed by one person. It’s slick and is easy to use.
For me, the most important features include some mentioned above, such as copying tables and the ability to search tables. Someone also mentioned triggers/routines. While those are a little rare for most users, one other important feature I use often is Views. Understandably, SQLB treats these exactly like tables, but of course that fails badly when exporting and attempting to modify its fields.
May 15th, 2009 at 9:29 am
How to join to project?
Features to this project:
– edit fields by click on this value. Now I see new screen for editing
– add button “back” and “next” (replace browser buttons)
– autocomplete type of column (not select from sropdown list – this a long way)
– use tabs (no show many data – add column, edit table, add index…). Create CLEAR and SIMPLE user interface. I help you!
Please, add me in current project.
I propose use my php5 framework Probus for building this Ajax application simple.
May 15th, 2009 at 9:30 am
Find one bug: Notice: Undefined index: in /home/anton/workspace/sqlbuddy/editcolumn.php on line 137
This bug show if tou select ID column of table and press EDIT link.
May 18th, 2009 at 3:14 am
Since I discovered SQL Buddy I haven’t seen PhpMyAdmin anymore. Great work! I think this has the potential of being amongst the most popular applications.
Above are many useful suggestions to improve the way it works. I would like to add a suggesiton as to where it works.
Installation is as easy as it can be, but for some it may be inconvenient to run SQL Buddy separately when they are working with a CMS. So, my suggestion is to put SQL Buddy into the main content management systems (starting with Joomla!). That would bring it within reach of many more people. Perhaps this could be done in a way that keeps updating simple, also for you, if you could sort of wrap the current code into some kind of framing that works with the APIs of the respective CMS.
May 19th, 2009 at 3:17 am
A query result export feature would help a lot
May 19th, 2009 at 3:32 am
Another good thing to have would be History of Queries executed?
June 22nd, 2009 at 8:41 am
Add/Edit tables with a secial ENGINE. We use NDB Cluster. Would be useful.
June 24th, 2009 at 11:57 pm
@Stieffers: edit options appear on the browse window only if there is a primary key defined for the table.
June 30th, 2009 at 9:32 pm
Would love if you could select “Design table” or “Modify Table” and be taken to a new screen where you make the changes you want and then select “Save” and not only have it make the changes but supply you with the modify sql statements.
We often check in each modification to the database we make into the associated svn project and this is one feature that will keep us from being able to use sqlbuddy.
July 8th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Is it possible to add table checking/repair in to the GUI? It is a feature that I would love to see in SQLBuddy.
July 11th, 2009 at 9:49 am
Compression Error?
Hey there!
I get the following error when I try to login to sqlbuddy on one of my sites:
…
The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because it uses an invalid or unsupported form of compression.
…
July 12th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
With regards to adding in REPAIR TABLE support – I have done this here locally.
cheers for the great product
July 20th, 2009 at 10:11 am
I am having issues where the app seems to become unresponsive after I’ve added a couple of records. For example, if I insert a couple new rows and then press Edit, the word Edit up top lights up and a duplicate of Edit appears (so now there are 2 “Edit” links up top). Every time I press Edit another link appears up top. I think the ajax methods are responsible in this instance… Anyone else running into this?
August 12th, 2009 at 9:28 am
First, many thanks for your work, I was tired of using phpmyadmin and too lazy to build my own webgui…
Some suggestions :
- when you create a new table the left frame isn’t updated maybe you could had a “refresh” button near the database name and/or auto update the frame when the operation (create/delete/rename table) is successful.
- I second Chris’ advice on “Support to view, modify and create foreign key constraints”
- Oh and being able to gzip dumps would be great too !
Cheers
August 14th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Thanks for the feedback everyone! I am definitely listening to what you all have to say however I don’t have time to personally respond to each comment. Keep the suggestions coming!
August 25th, 2009 at 4:53 am
Would be great to have a html editor built in to a ‘text’ field. So I could give a client SQLBuddy as a CMS and any ‘text’ fields have html editing capabilities. Great work.
September 5th, 2009 at 8:35 am
Whenever I log in I am always redirected to the cgi-bin folder on our website (not a folder in the sqlbuddy folder, but at goodshepherdinstitute.org/cgi-bin/).
Have any idea why this is? I use sqlbuddy on other sites, and it works just fine.
you can’t acces this, but the sqlbuddy installation is at goodshepherdinstitute.org/admin/sqlbuddy.
September 5th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
I would love to have the option to choose storage engine when I create a table,
I work with many storage engines, not just MyISAM. (Both some custom stuff, and public engines), so it would also be desirable if the list would populated with the engines mysql has support for.
September 17th, 2009 at 2:13 am
If there is a default value for an enum field, set that option as the default value of the optionlist. Thats the only thing I wanted to see as a change
Keep up the good work!
October 5th, 2009 at 11:07 am
I agree with those who said resizable left column, I have a lot of tables that you can’t see some important parts of the table name. Also, I noticed there’s no way to see if a field is auto-increment or to set an existing field as auto-increment.
Working with this is a dream compared to pma, though. Thanks so much, Calvin.
October 24th, 2009 at 12:26 am
Definitely hoping for foreign key support! Great app though!
October 24th, 2009 at 9:56 am
Good progress.
Still a long way to go before I replace SQLyog with SQLBuddy. I find myself saving countless hours using a fast desktop application like SQLyog.
Things are moving in the right direction with SQLBuddy. PMA is a joke.
October 29th, 2009 at 4:40 am
The ability to specify the length of the index when trying to put an index onto a “TEXT” type field, it simply fails now
November 13th, 2009 at 1:52 am
First-thanks a lot!
and a VERY important thing:
1)In phpMyAdmin you can always see SQL code generated by the script. I examine and view it very often!!!
2)I didn’t find an ability to edit table as a GRID
3)SQL History
I understand that you wish to make interface as clean as possible, but some features save a very lot of time and I can’t see them here
sidu24 has an awful interface, but, damn, I use it because of that features
suggestion-add customization of toolbar
November 13th, 2009 at 1:58 am
+1. a feature to add text in specified encoding <form accept-charset="cp1257"
November 13th, 2009 at 2:09 am
bug: if I have primary key “müs”, your script can’t delete it
where can I set collation?
how can I view binary data?
the tool looked so good first 10 minutes…
November 16th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
I agree with 147: inline editing would be huge.
November 23rd, 2009 at 2:26 pm
I’m surprised nobody has mentioned this yet… a calendar/date picker for DATE/DATETIME fields would be super-handy. One such as MoTools:DatePicker (http://www.monkeyphysics.com/mootools/script/2/datepicker) would be easy to drop right in.
January 8th, 2010 at 4:53 pm
I found sqlbuddy because there is an open suggestion at Dreamhost to offer it as an alternative to phpmyadmin. I like the clean look and feel of it but it’s still lacking some functionality.
Are you still on it? Have you considered putting it on github or something similar, so everybody can contribute? Or if you don’t want that, maybe a public bugtracker or a getsatisfaction forum?
My suggestions:
* utf8 should be default charset for new database – codepages need to die
* group databases in the left pane to reduce clutter. For example, when there are related databases like [foo_development, foo_test, foo_staging, foo_production, foo_old], group them all under foo and collapse it by default (phpmyadmin does this)
* Why is the main menu duplicated?
January 13th, 2010 at 9:58 pm
I’m still working on the project but it isn’t my #1 priority at the moment. I’m currently managing the source using svn and the repo is hosted here: http://code.google.com/p/sql-buddy/
April 29th, 2010 at 6:57 am
Exportin querys to CVS files
April 29th, 2010 at 7:24 pm
I’d like a switch to view the structure by default when clicking a table, instead of browsing the entries, and another option to view that structure without scrolling.
Adding more than one column at a time – maybe the fields could be used as defaults for the new columns. So creating 5 INT columns and then giving them names would require very little clicking and typing.
In table index, display also the size of the table, not just number of rows and overhead?
Hmm, can’t think of anything more at the moment, but then again I just downloaded it, I haven’t even really used it yet =D
It’s extremely slick, I’m impressed. Congrats! It would be a shame to not perfect it, especially since you seem to have done all the heavy lifting already =)
June 7th, 2010 at 12:26 pm
I would like to echo Tilman’s suggest above about auto-widths or at least having some way to set the column widths for display. I’m constantly having to resize the columns in order to display the whole table. Also, it appears that you can not resize the right-most column.
Otherwise, very cool app. So useful that I am even exposing it to clients (which is why the auto-widths would really help).