I'm happier at the command line, but needed some graphical representation of information and easy ways to export example queries for the book I'm working on. I noticed that phpMyAdmin now has a Designer tab, which shows relationships between tables and allows you to define them.

She includes two screenshots of the process of setting up a foreign key on two tables. You can find lots more articles related to the designer view here.

Despite approaching its 12th birthday, phpMyAdmin is still under active development, with at least one significant version released every year since the project's inception. In fact even after almost a decade of use I still marvel over discovering features which I had no idea existed. In this article I thought I'd highlight 10 useful phpMyAdmin features which may have escaped you during your daily interaction with this fantastic utility.

Making the list of their ten tips are things like:

• Manage User Privileges
• Change the Theme
• Monitor Server Status
• Create PDF Relational Diagrams
• Use Your Native Language

For much of the time, developers just want to check some data, alter a few records, or back up the database. The phpMyAdmin and MonoQL zipped distributions range from 2MB to 7MB, and they're overkill for most day-to-day administration. You're using a sledgehammer to crack a peanut. Here are three lightweight MySQL administration alternatives you should consider. They're all PHP-based, open source, and great for quick database tasks.

The three that made their short list are:

• SQL Buddy
• Adminer
• PHP Mini Admin

Others suggested in the comments include Chive and DBKiss.

I've spent years using phpMyAdmin (much to my chagrin). And I've recently warmed up to MySQL Workbench. But it wasn't until this week that I stumbled across Adminer, a single-file PHP application for MySQL administration. It's hard not to be impressed by Adminer, which is both devilishly simple and elegantly designed. The file downloads as adminer-2.3.2.php; save it as index.php in a folder named adminer, then navigate to http://servername.com/adminer/. Supply the name of your MySQL server (adding a colon if it's hosted on a non-standard port), your username, and password, and you're off!

He includes a few screenshots of the interface to create tables and manage them. If you've used the phpMyAdmin interface, you'll find a lot of things that are familiar in Adminer. If you're interesting in grabbing the latest source, you can pull it from SourceForge.

n my phpMyAdmin installation, version 3.1.1, none of the old style config settings [...] had any effect, and the solution was terribly elusive. "view blob", "show blob", "display blob", all that Google suggested were people asking the same question, at various ages of the internet.

Finally, after wading through negative comments of forums and not getting much help at all, Matthias dug into the source and found a session variable that can be set to true and the content magically appears.

Now, I agree that phpMyAdmin is one of the best out there and is is very user friendly. I myself also used phpMyAdmin much until recently… I got introduced to another program which within an hour became my favourite and also this led me to research others out there. Thus, this post!

Other options included in their list are:

• Adminer
• Navicat
• SQLWave
• SQLyog
• DBDesigner 4

Be sure to check out the comments for more thoughts and ideas to add to the list.

A couple of weeks ago I received a book from PACKT Publishing titled "Mastering phpMyAdmin 3.1 for Effective MySQL Management" written by Marc Delisle, with the request if I could read it and write a review about it. Why not ? I haven't used phpMyAdmin in whole my career so I might as well read about the tool everyone around me is using. And since phpMyAdmin is also bundled with Zend Server, it can only benefit my day-to-day job.

He talks about the contents of the book (chapters on the phpMyAdmin interface, working with MySQL on the command line) and some of the handy bits of information he learned along the way.

There are many reviews of this book already, so I will mostly describe how this edition is different from the previous one. In short, though, I would say that this version is much more readable, and is still the best book to buy if you want a book on phpMyAdmin. The reviews I've read here all agree with my own assessment that phpMyAdmin is a surprise '" right when you think you know what it does, a book points out a load of stuff you didn't know it did.

He breaks it into two sections - the things that have gotten better (like the removal of some unneeded items and he inclusion of some of the more minor features) and some things that, unfortunately, have not improved (such as the increased size of the table of contents and the addition of other, too large screenshots).

I've been using phpMyAdmin since... Hmmm... Well... The times before I used to code in PHP. So when offered to review Mastering phpMyAdmin 3.1 by Marc Deslisle, I didn't expected to learn anything new, but I was wrong.

He recommends the book to both beginners and experts to the software (more so to the beginners, obviously) and mentions some of the topics it covers - everything from a basic introduction to the interface out to using the SQL validator and advanced bookmarking.

"Mastering phpMyAdmin 3.1 for Effective MySQL Management" is a book about - phpMyAdmin. phpMyAdmin is a tool that most web developers use on a daily basis and know in and out. The existing knowledge about PMA is the hurdle that will make most devs refrain from buying the book; 75% of the information presented in the book was already in my head, having used PMA for over half a dozen years now.

He mentions a few things (like the multi-table query generator and split-file exports) that he didn't know the tool even had. He recommends the book overall, though and notes that he learned quite a bit about the tool despite having worked with it for years already.

You can find more information on the book on the Packt website.