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www.it-ebooks.infoCHAPTER 27 • THE MANY MYSQL CLIENTSMySQL’s GUI Client ProgramsCognizant that not all users are particularly comfortable working from the command line, MySQL ABhas been making great strides in developing graphically based database management solutions. Untilrecently MySQL had maintained several different products; however they were recently consolidatedwithin a single project named MySQL Workbench. MySQL Workbench is intended to be a one stop shopfor managing all aspects of a MySQL server, including schemas, users, and table data. Although still inbeta at the time of this writing, I’ve found MySQL Workbench to be quite stable. I use it for not onlymanaging table schemas, but as a convenient solution for testing queries.MySQL Workbench is available on all of the standard platforms, Linux, Mac OS X, and Windowsincluded. Source code is also available if you want to build it yourself. Head on over tohttp://dev.mysql.com/downloads to get the appropriate version for your platform. The installationprocess is easy; just initiate the process, review the usage terms, and choose which components you’dlike to install.Once installed, I suggest spending some time exploring MySQL Workbench’s many features. I findthe GUI-based schema design and forward engineering feature to be indispensable (Figure 27-1), as itallows you to design and maintain a database schema using a convenient point-and-click interfacerather than hand-coding schema commands.Figure 27-1. Managing a database schema in MySQL Workbench523