MySQL is a relational database management system. It provides a very fast, multi-threaded, multi-user, and robust SQL (Structured Query Language) database server. MySQL is the most popular open source database, and is the database component of the LAMP software stack. LAMP consists of the Apache web server, MySQL and PHP, the essential building blocks to run a general purpose web server. MySQL is used and championed by many large organizations including Google, Facebook, BBC, Intel, Sun, SAP, Dell, AMD, Novell, Veritas and many others.
With the increasing popularity of MySQL, it is not surprising that developers have written useful tools which help users to monitor, query, administer, troubleshoot, and optimise MySQL databases. This article identifies 5 open source tools which help to reduce the complexity associated with the powerful database software.
One tool which is not featured in this article but warrants a mention is sqlyog. It is an excellent utility to manage and administer MySQL. However, whilst the job agent is available as a native Linux utility, its main functionality has not yet been ported to Linux (although that does run under Wine).
