Hello all Let me introduce myself first. I am the ex-lead developer of SQLyog (one of the most popular GUI for MySQL which is Windows only and runs on Linux through WINE, more info at http://www.webyog.com). === New Project: wxWidgets based cross-platform GUI for Open Source databases === === Motivation === I have recently shifted to US to study for MS (and hopefully PhD in Univ of Iowa). I have also shifted to Mac OS X as my primary usage machine (after lifetime of Windows devotion). As part of my coursework, I work with MySQL and PostgreSQL extensively. I searched but couldnt find any GUI which has similar power like SQLyog by any means. I have tried (and have tried before also) various GUIs for respective databases but somehow the features in them are restrictive and are not powerful enough for developers like me who writes lots of SQL queries and needs to get things done fast. We can say that we already have enough GUIs for all open source databases (open source as well as commercial) available in the market but are they powerful enough to suffice the needs of an experienced SQL developer as well as newbies. The top three problems with existing GUI managers are: - Most of the usable/powerful GUIs are not open source which is one of the most powerful motivation for us to look for an alternate solutions. - 90% of such GUIs are DB specific. It becomes very hard for developers who work with multiple DBs as part of their work. It forces them to learn different user interface/softwares to work with the respective databases. - Of the few multiple-db GUIs, 99% (or probably 100%) use JDBC/ODBC layer to connect and work with the databases and JAVA or some other kind of high level toolkit/language to develop the GUI. This results in applications being bulky and slow and never able to provide the speed that a low level C/C++ client API provide and are supported by all of the standard databases. A simple to use GUI for all databases === The basic idea behind such a GUI is to develop a small footprint, extremely fast, multilingual, cross platform administrator/development tool for databases. One of the basic requirements thats this GUI will fulfill is to allow a developer to efficiently execute/plan queries and allow an administrator to quickly do jobs like backups/restores etc. with fewest mouse clicks and across different databases. Once the basic architecture has been set, I plan to extend it to support advanced features like MS Access like form development, query builder, scheduled backups, data synchronization, configuration management, replication manager, user manager etc. wxWidgets === Since last couple of years, wxWidgets (formerly wxWindows) has transformed itself into a highly powerful cross-platform GUI library which when compiled gives the native look and feel of the host operating system. This is something which other libraries like Qt, JAVA lack. More info about wxwidgets can be found at: http://www.wxwidgets.org. Yet unnamed DB management environment === I dont have the time nor the resources to do everything by myself. As I see, there are too many things which are best distributed among people/developers who are good at those specific things. E.g. I will require good graphics designer to develop the icons for the tool, web developer to keep the website updated, db specific veterans to best code individual db management code etc. Also, it would be a great way to learn some programming and show it as part of your undergraduate/graduate project development requirement :) Is it viable? === I am not too big a fan of reinventing the wheel or work on a project which will go bust in couple of years? So what I want is from you people a little initial idea and discussion about such a tool. Is it viable? Is it OK to develop such a tool? Will people use it? I am cross posting this to various db mailing lists as well as relevant newsgroups to get maximum idea about it. You can also contact me directly at riteshn@xxxxxxxxx if you would be interested. Waiting for your comments. -- Ritesh
