I’ve recently discovered HeidiSQL after driving Oracle’s “MySQL Workbench” for years to develop a registration database/web application for Horses for Hope where Alexander does therapeutic horseback riding.
Don’t get me wrong…”MySQL Workbench” has been a wonderful tool for development, especially when it came to doing exports/imports as part of the backup and migration strategy for the application.
However, I’ve recently found myself in the situation where I’m dealing with three different versions/flavours of MySQL: WAMPSERVER is running MySQL 5.7.14 locally, the current web hosting for the application after an emergency move is running MySQL 5.6.32, and the new VPS that will be it’s new home is running a fork of MySQL called MariaDB version 10.2.17. MariaDB was designed as a drop-in replacement for MySQL after Oracle bought them but has been a diverging fork of that code with occasional syncs but they are now noticeably different database servers.
And export/import is one feature where HeidiSQL beats “MySQL Workbench” hands-down where one of the target options that HeidiSQL allows for export is directly shipping the SQL commands to a different connection you’ve already defined.
So imagine my surprise that the export from MySQL 5.7.14 directly to MariaDB 10.2.17 was just plain seamless and completely bypassed the incompatibilities between those databases (the big gotcha for that migration path was having to recreate the views in MariaDB which this does automatically).
Absolutely brilliant! 🙂