Programs for administration of MySQL

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I am trying to explain the tools that enable you to manage or access to a MySQL server through graphical interfaces. Among these are the three most well-known phpMyAdmin GUI programs provided by MySQL AB: MySQL Administrator, MySQL Query Browser and MySQL Migration Toolkit. PhpMyAdmin is probably one of the most popular software ever in the world wide web. It is indeed an open source tool written in PHP, which allows the administration of MySQL through a web interface. PhpMyAdmin is developed by a community in isolation from MySQL AB is a web-based and therefore requires a web server capable of running PHP. Its main facilities is to allow the administration of the database from a remote server without the need to be open to remote connections: it is the web server that runs phpMyAdmin making connections to MySQL. Therefore you need to install the software on the local web server than MySQL to be able to carry out the administration through any browser. Access to the server is done with the rights of the user accessing the application.

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The software can be downloaded from the site www.phpmyadmin.net. Once downloaded, all you have to do is install it in a directory on the web server and set the data in the configuration file (config.inc.php), choosing among the possible ways to authenticate users. You should choose between http authentication and that based on cookies, as the authentication type 'config' involves storing the password in cleartext in the configuration file, in this case also the connection to the server will always the same username. Configuring a MySQL server on config.inc.php is filling the block of code with the data needed for the connection: the host address is running on the server, any port other than the default (3306) The php extension to use (mysql or mysqli), the authentication type selection, if it is to type 'config' you should also write here your user name and password with which you connect in the case instead of via http or cookie authentication is required to indicate a user name and password that has SELECT permissions on the mysql database, namely the possible (for security reasons it will be well that the user does not have other privileges), but also work PhpMyAdmin without this configuration. An interesting possibility is to configure more than one server on the same file: this will allow users to PhpMyAdmin to select, through a drop-down box on the home page, the server you want to connect.

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The interface of phpMyAdmin is available in many languages, including of course, Italian. Since we can, as we have seen, configure it with user rights access to MySQL using it is also useful to allow non-administrators access only to its own database. MySQL Administrator is a program instead of the administration interface provided by MySQL AB. It lets you configure the server, monitor status and performance, starting and stopping, manage users, backup and more. Works with MySQL versions from 4.0 onwards. The recommended version is 1.1, which supports all new features introduced in MySQL 5.0.

MySQL Query Browser is a graphical interface to other programs provided by the manufacturer of MySQL. Its function is to facilitate the implementation and optimization of query and analysis of data from the server. Although this program works with versions of MySQL from 4.0 onwards. We close the show with MySQL Migration Toolkit. This program, again supplied by MySQL AB, the specific function of facilitating the migration of data to MySQL starting from different RDBMS. It is available at the time (February 2006) for Windows (from Windows 2000 onwards) and Linux, and requires the Java Runtime Environment, works only with MySQL versions from 4.1 onwards (the manual states that is designed to work at least with version 5.0, but the description of the migration process claims to be able to transfer data to MySQL 4.1). The starting database can be Access, SQL Server, Oracle or another MySQL server. However, an interesting feature of this program is that you can extend it by writing modules (in C, Java, PHP) to import data from other RDBMS.