If ever there was a before and after moment in developing with MySQL, for me at least it’s been since my boss pointed out DBDesigner, what a package.

This open source database design tool from Fabforce has it all, including a lot of the features that it’s more expensive competitors don’t offer, just check out the screenshots.  Here’s a summary of features:

• Available on Linux / MS Windows
• User Interfaced based on industry standard layouting software
  • Canvas navigation similar to Adobe Illustrator® and Photoshop®
  • Palettes (docked / floating) including “Bird Eyes view”
  • Available objects include tables, realtions, labels, regions, images
  • Extensive Drag’n'drop support
  • Extensive Popup-Menu support
  • Advanced Editors
  • UNLIMITED Undo-/Redo- functions
  • Copy-/Cut-/Paste clipboard functions (XML, DDL)
  • Align functions
• Design Mode / Query Mode
• Reverse engineering MySQL, Oracle, MSSQL and any ODBC databases
• Userdefined schema-generation
• Model-To-Database syncronisation
• Index support
• Automatic foreign key placement
• Weak entity support
• Standard Inserts storing and sync
• Full documentation capabilities
• Advanced model printing
• Output as image
• All MySQL datatypes with all options
• User defined datatypes
• Database storage, ability to save model within database
• Network-/Multiuser access through database storage
• Version control*
• SQL Query Builder
• SQL Command History
• SQL Command storage within model
• Plugin interface