DBDesigner Editor's Review

This program is a one-stop shop for all your database design, creation, modelling and maintenance needs.

This open source application is a great piece of software for those who deal with MySQL on a regular basis. Using DBDesigner you can design and control MySQL databases to your exact specifications. As an Open Source Project experts are also welcome to download the source code and fix any problems or bugs they come across themselves. Of course, for less advanced users there's always the online problem reporting through forums.

The interface of DBDesigner itself is basic, but intuitive and easy to use. As well as extensive drag and drop and popup-menu support, there's model-to-database synchronisation; user defined schema generation; advanced model printing; design and query modes; reverse engineering with a range of databases; SQL query builder; SQL command history... the list goes on.

Pros: Reverse engineering capabilities, intuitive interface, works with Windows and Linux OS

Cons: It can get to be a time consuming task to install on Linux OS if libraries are missing, or if you've got different versions of the libraries installed.

Conclusion: If you're looking for a visual database design system and you want something small and simple to use, it's worth taking some time to work with this application. The guy responsible for creating DBDesign was approached by and joined MySQL AB in 2003 to work on developing graphical user interface tools so he must have been onto something with DBDesign.