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Add to SafariWhen comparing HeidiSQL vs Schemaball, 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 Schemaball is ranked 13th. 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 Supports reading schemas from multiple sources
Schemaball can read schemas from multiple sources such as SQL schema dumps, flat files or live databases.
Pro Interesting twist on visual interface
Gives a quick way to grasp an overview on the past/present complexity of the database (or group of tables) undergoing inspection.
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 Visualizations may be hard to get used to
Since schemas are visualized by using stylized "schema balls" it may be hard getting used to them since they are so different from the other, more straightforward options.
