March 2009 Archives

Well maybe it is a little bit late to write about "Web 2.0" now, since it is dying, at least does one gain the impression when looking at some posts. But my point is, that "Web 2.0" is a nice concept for niche-players and start-ups, but not really for big companies. I came to write this post, because I have recently read another (old) article about an economist research paper here. There the author states, that the economist does not mention "Web 2.0" or other word combinations containing the suffix "2.0" and thus is incomplete. This is clearly not my point of view for this topic and I will tell you why.

The management of a database is most of the time, just a routine task. The responsible has to monitor most of the time the database, its transactions, the backups and the server capacity. Sometimes one needs to correct something or just look up a query and ... There are many exceptional scenarios. My focus in this small report is on the beginning and the end of the life cycle of a database: Designing the tables (and testing it) as well as migrating a database (to a new release for example).

Coming from the web design/development the tools I want to use should fulfill some requirements:

• Support MySQL and SQL (at least)
• Support remote connections (ideally with SSH)
• Run on Mac OS X
• Cost nothing (at least if I do not use the tool on a regular basis)

On the basis of this selection criteria I have found two free tools. One of the do I use now on a regular basis, the other one is not that great (yet) and I do not use it any more.