Navicat MySQL: A Tool for Developers and DBAs

Posted on 05. Jul, 2006 by Will Fitch in News, Product Reviews

Navicat MySQL is a tool produced by PremiumSoft CyberTech Ltd that allows both developers and DBAs to access, design, manipulate, report and manage data and the MySQL server. Although it’s not free, it is certainly worth taking the time to play around with.

Navicate MySQL is certainly the tool of choice for my DBA needs. As a developer/DBA, I handle large amounts of data, and am continuously altering and adding databases, tables and fields. Navicat has certainly helped me in this aspect.

This is not a tutorial for Navicat, but this will be coming soon. Right now, I want to introduce some capabilities of Navicat, and show how it differs from other database tools. First, here is a list of features for Navicat:

  1. Timeout Reconnection for SQL server
  2. Data and Structure Synchronization
  3. New Query Builder – create query from different databases
  4. Query Parameter
  5. SQL Console
  6. View Builder
  7. Views, Stored Procedure and Triggers creation
  8. Private Key for SSH Tunnel
  9. Supports all MySQL versions
  10. SSH Tunnel
  11. HTTP Tunnel
  12. Foreign Keys
  13. Foreign Key Data Selection
  14. Unicode and Character Set Support
  15. Edit text in Blob field
  16. Print Table Structure
  17. Import data from ODBC
  18. Import / Export data up to 18 most popular formats including MS Access, MS Excel, XML, PDF and TXT.
  19. Create Schedule for Backup, Import / Export, Data Transfer, Saved Queries and Data Synchronization.
  20. Create Reports with visual Report Builder
  21. Report Archive – Reports can be saved as an archive file (.raf) for backup and increased portability.
  22. Create Report Archive from command line

The best advantage is PremiumSoft keeps up with the MySQL versions! Yes, you heard me correctly. When MySQL 5 went into production, this tool had already supported stored procedures, triggers, views, and other MySQL 5 features! Keep in mind that I have tried quite a few tools in my time to include SQLYog (decent, but just not enough features), phpMyAdmin (too slow, but is web based and free), MySQL Query Browser (crashes all the time, but is free), MySQL Administrator (is okay, but doesn’t do a whole lot), MySQL Maestro (just boring and useless IN MY OPINION!), as well as others.

If you want to download a trial version of Navicat, go to http://www.navicat.com/detail.html. They have different licenses and it works on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.

If you do download the trial, please post comments on here for your experience.

*NOTE* I am in NO WAY affiliated with PremiumSoft CyberTech Ltd, so don’t cry that I work for them.

[del.icio.us] [Digg] [Google] [LinkedIn] [StumbleUpon] [Windows Live] [Yahoo!] [Email] More »

Tags: ,

Related Articles

6 Responses to “Navicat MySQL: A Tool for Developers and DBAs”

  1. Mike

    21. Jan, 2007

    I’ve been using Navicat MySql for about 3 months now and as far as I’m concerned it blows all other clients I’ve tried out of the water (admitedly, this would not be difficult).

    It has some very nice features for importing and exporting tables and data that make it really usable. I find the user interface very clean and logical.

    It still feels like a young product that has some way to go towards having a rich feature set, but a new upgrade is coming in 2007 that should add a lot to it. For the money I think it is well worth it and I’m really pleased I paid for it.

  2. Mark Matthews

    10. Feb, 2007

    I have tried both Sqlyog and Navicat. Initial impression was that Navicat had more features and followed “Access” like interface, so it was better.

    However I kept the community version of Sqlyog and I was not disappointed. In terms of speed, sqlyog beats navicat all the way (try bringing a table with 10,000+ rows in the data grid). Moreover, my hosted MySQL server does not allow direct connection and Navicat over HTTP tunnel was non-functional.

    Yes, Navicat has got some eye-candy as compared to Sqlyog, but I think the community edition of Sqlyog does > 99% of my work, and since I sync my data to my laptop everyday I shelled out $50 to get an enterprise edition.

    Just my 2 cents.

  3. will.fitch

    10. Feb, 2007

    Good post Mark.

    I’m personally not a fan of SQL Yog, and I paid for the enterprise version. I found that it crashes with large sums of data brought back.

    I do use HTTP tunneling with Navicat and it works beautifully. To each their own.

  4. fedmich

    28. Apr, 2008

    Yes, I agree. I love this program. Saved me a lot of hours uploading those really-really huge databases.

    Thanks :)

  5. Tyson

    04. Aug, 2008

    hey guyz, i am a dba user. i have tried both navicat and sqlyog and also other mysql gui tools. Amongst all i vote for sqlyog which simply rocks with its best and improved stable features. you can have best try out of it.

  6. error

    01. Jul, 2009

    Ive been using SQLYog for years and paid for the enterprise edition. Upgrade support expires after 1 year and if you miss an upgrade you miss an upgrade! My version cannot be updated and fails to dump some large tables. Since I will have to fork out some cash to get a newer version of SQLYog I thought I should look at the market.

    Navicat trial version worked first time!

    Since I have to pay to upgrade SQLYog (about the same as Navicat) then buying Navicat is a no-brainer for me. Navicat has a better (IMO) upgrade policy and the premium version (still very reasonable price) works for MYSql, Oracle and PostgreSQL.

    Easy decision.

Leave a Reply