Along with many Rails developers, I’ve struggled to find a satisfactory database browsing and editing tool, particularly for MySQL. I’ve bounced back and forth between YourSQL and CocoaMySQL–preferring YourSQL’s more intuitive interface at times, and CocoaMySQL’s features at other times.

Recently however, with the development of the ColumnComments plugin, I decided to move on once again in search of the Ultimate Tool. I needed something that would give me the ability to add comments to mysql columns, preferably in a nice and intuitive GUI. I tried Navicat, but couldn’t figure out how to add comments.

Then I stumbled upon the lesser-known MySQL Query Browser written by the MySQL team and was quite surprised. At first, it appears to be a simple (and fast!) query tool, but upon further inspection, it’s quite possible to change table definitions by right-clicking on the tables and even add comments to the columns!

I prefer this tool over the MySQL Admin application as well, because of its lighter footprint and (in my experience) stability.

If you’d like to try it out, go on and dowload yourself a copy.