MySQL has been my database of choice for a long time. Just about every host supports it and it meets the requirements for just about every project I work on. When I’ve needed to be in the database to make changes during development I’ve used numerous programs over the years. Some of those have included phpMyAdmin, DBVisualizer, and the command line. Now that my full time development is on a Mac I’ve switched to Sequel Pro when I need to work in the database.

It's Free

Sequel Pro is a free, as in GPL, MySQL GUI program for Macs.

It's Slick and Fast

Sequel Pro is a native Mac application, looks like it, and feels like it. In the recent past I had been using phpMYAdmin as my Mac GUI. Sequel Pro is quite a bit faster. There is a noticable difference between phpMyAdmin running in a development environment and a native Mac application.

It's Just The Basics

Some of the other GUI tools I use with MySQL offer a lot of features. They are great for building out database schemas, performance monitoring and tuning, and digging into the of using databases. For most of us, these features aren't needed on a regular basis. Sequel Pro only has the regularly used features providing for a dead simple interface. The feature set is about the same as phpMyAdmin and anyone used to the phpMyAdmin interface should be able to switch with ease.

Special thanks to Bob Christenson at Mustardseed Media for sharing this application with me.