DBDesigner 4 question

Hi Folks,

I'm new to this group, I just installed MySQL 5 last night.

I also installed some of the GUI tools I saw mentioned in this group
earier yesterday. I installed MySQL Administrator, MySQL Query Browser
and DBDesigner 4. The DBDesigner 4 web site says it's for MySQL vs 3
and 4 but I'm hoping that most of it is compatible with MySQL 5.?.

OK, to finally get to the point! What is the informed opinion on
DBDesigner 4? Is it worth investing time on?

The reason I ask is that I seem to have lost the table definition I
was working on twice now by mistakenly hitting the ESC key before
saving the table. There is no warning, none of those annoying "are you
sure" message boxes that are almost as aggravating as loosing 30
minutes of work. The table editor (and the definition I was working
on) simply evaporated like the dregs of last week's coffee in the cup
on top of my file cabinet.

I've spent very little time with it (had to walk away so I didn't set
fire to the !@#$ thing) but it actually seems pretty well done except
for the bloody freakin problem I've been moaning about. Oh, and the
docs. It's obvious that a lot of time and thought went into the docs
but they could use just a little bit more.

I hate to be such a complainer because I really can see that a lot of
good effort has gone into this code.

Your opinions and suggestions will be appreciated. The non-profane
ones anyway.

Thank you,

Don

Re: DBDesigner 4 question

"Don" wrote in message
news:tetqt11b96pc68cufj6dta3kgd3g6hfmqt@4ax.com...
> OK, to finally get to the point! What is the informed opinion on
> DBDesigner 4? Is it worth investing time on?

Depends on if you need a ER diagramming tool that badly. Even though I
support the use of ER diagrams, I actually don't use them very often except
when producing engineering docs. I end up designing databases using pencil
& paper (or a whiteboard). Then from that diagram I write a SQL script for
the DDL.

Note that you can use DBDesigners in reverse-engineering mode. Once you
implement your database (using a SQL script), you can produce the ER diagram
directly from the live database. At least that way you'd be less likely to
hit ESC partway through.

Also, there's a successor to DBDesigner, called MySQL Workbench.
It's still in alpha release, but here's the announcement with links to
download:
http://forums.mysql.com/read.php?113,44592,44592#msg-44592

As for hitting the ESC key accidentally, perhaps you should glue a thumbtack
to the key! >;-)
I get bitten by that too -- my "vi" habits are unfortunately not helpful
when I'm writing in textareas in HTML forms.

Regards,
Bill K.