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by Marc Logemann.
Original Post: new db tool in my toolbox
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After a long and unpleasant journey of trying out several database tools that can handle multiple db vendors, i finally settled on DBVisualizer. But before i speak about the tool, let me explain what i tried before.
I started with vendor supplied tools for the different database and realized quite soon that these solutions are either totally buggy or non-existant at all. Lets start with MySQL Query Manager, i tried this thingy on windows and OSX and on both platforms, this app crashed so often that i wonder what the message behind this could be. Then i went on with the DB2 on iSeries/i5 tooling called OperationsNavigator. I blogged about that a while ago and this java app is so unresponsive, awkyard to use and ugly to look at, that this could be only programmed by a bunch of Cobol programmers. Of course i also tried other approaches to database clients like webclients and stuff, but all in all, it wasnt very entertaining.
Pretty soon it was clear that i need a multi vendor desktop db tool like for instance... Squirrel. I liked its price in the first place, meaning $0. But even though they re-continued development on this tool after a quite large break, the app is also buggy. And with buggy i dont mean: "ohh i worked with it for 3 months now and found the first bug" but more "yikes... this doesnt work either". No offense here, i could join the team and fix the bugs, but i just dont have the time and notion for that.
So i tried a few of the commercial ones. (No not Toad, its far away from being multi vendor.) I cant remember every tool i tried in the last months because it were a few but the most appealing was and is DBVisualizer. First its Java which i like a lot because i dont know if i will continue OSX to the rest of my life. Then its GUI is nice, even though its hard to see that they use the same iconset than our commerical logistics appliation :). Feature wide it has not all one possibly wants (like a visual alter) but thats expected to come soon. Its a solid (means non buggy) tool with some nice features. Nothing earthshaking, but things like the Import Manager are neat. They support basically all DBs present but support varies of course.
So i decided this weekend that i am going to buy it this week and the price of $129 is ok. Its very interessting to see that all of my development tools are in fact java based. And this is more or less a coincidence. I dont chose software solely on this criteria, but it seems some of the best tools in their areas are in java. Here is my java dev tools list: JProfiler, IntelliJ IDEA, oXygen XML.
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