If you’re frequently working with databases, be it designing or querying, a good database designing tool will not only speed up the designing process, but to ease maintenance cycle and provide a well documented design as well.
DBDesigner 4
The DBDesigner 4, released by Fabulous Force under GNU GPL license, is a great database designer tool for MySQL, which is loaded with tons of good features and yet it’s free!
Platform wise, DBDesigner 4 is available for both Linux and Windows.
Visual Database Design
As simple as expected, the database visual designing tool featured in DBDesigner 4 does not only present an appealing look of the database structures, but provide an easy-to-use interface as well. Without the need for documentation, you can easily roll up your sleeves and get yourself being productive with DBDesigner 4.
Connect to MySQL Database
When you’ve done with the visual design, you can also save the design into a database. All the visual representations will be automatically converted to valid SQL statements in the backend.
To do this, just click on File > Save in Database, and connect to a database, or create a new database connection if doesn’t exist.
Reverse Engineering
Besides, you can also connect to an existing database (File > Open from Database), and reverse engineering will automatically be executed to present you the equivalent visual database model.
This is definitely a great approach to understand an existing database that you’ve never work on before. With table relationships properly mapped out, it makes understanding easier.
Design Mode and Query Mode
If you would like to get your hand dirty with SQL coding, you can also switch to the Query Mode from Design Mode, by pressing Ctrl + Tab, and you’ll be presented with a query panel at the bottom to facilitate manual coding.
Save As SQL Script
That’s not all, you can also generate an equivalent SQL script for the database design created. Just click at File > Export > SQL Create Script, and you can choose to save the script to file or copy to clipboard.
All these are only some commonly used features of a database designing tool. There are actually a lot of other useful features available in DBDesigner 4. Check out the features here.
Download DBDesigner 4.