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Add to SafariWhen comparing HeidiSQL vs SchemaSpy, the Slant community recommends HeidiSQL for most people. In the question“What are the best relational database design and modelling tools?” HeidiSQL is ranked 4th while SchemaSpy is ranked 6th. The most important reason people chose HeidiSQL is:
Licensed under GNU GPL.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Free
Licensed under GNU GPL.
Pro Portable
Alongside the possibility of downloading the installer and sourcecode, a portable version of the software is available.
Pro Great UI and ease of use
HeidiSQL has a comprehensive and intuitive interface.
Pro Syntax completion
Pro Lightweight
Pro Great user management
The user manager of HeidiSQL can easily set privileges on a per-database level or give access to only certain commands.
Pro Data synchronization
HeidiSQL can compare and synchronize your data and structure between local and remote databases.
Pro SSH tunnel
HeidiSQL allows connecting to your MySQL database via SSH tunnel.
Pro Connect to servers via command line
You can use command line parameters to automate connections.
Pro Works fine with Wine under Linux
Pro Entity Relationship Digramming for nearly any JDBC-compliant database
SchemaSpy can analyze database metadata in order to reverse engineer ER (Entity Relationship) diagrams for any JDBC-compliant database which includes Oracle, MySQL, Sql-Server and Postgres among others.
Pro Has a GUI option available
SchemaSpy is a CLI tool. For people who prefer GUI-based tools there's one available from a different maintainer which stands on top of the CLI version.
Cons
Con Can be buggy
HeidiSQL is known to have some bugs that results in crashes.
Con Intellisense is not intelligent
No intellisense for columns unless table name is aliased.
Con UI design is very bad
Generic windows form
Con No session backup
You cannot recover your session after close or even worse crash.
Con Works under Linux only with Wine
It works quite well under Wine with Linux, but you must always take notice if the last version of HeidiSQL has been tested, for it may not run at all. There are some bugs in the Wine version that can be annoying and you have to kill the program and restart it. A native Linux version would be great.
Con No built-in debugger included
Con Does not work with schema dumpfiles
SchemaSpy has no methods for dealing with when you only have a schema generated via something like (mysqldump --no-data [options] >schema-only_dump.sql) , and do not currently have access to a live database to connect with.
Con GUI option is a separate download by a different maintainer
Since the GUI version is from a different maintainer, it may be abandoned and eventually break if SchemaSpy development continues beyond that. Or it may implement new features much later than the CLI version.
Con Project may be dead or dying
The codebase on sourceforge hasn't seen an update since 2010.
