Flex 4.5 based MySQL Query Browser

Ever needed a simple, web based tool to query your SQL databases? This query browser not only offers the simple interface but also (limited) support to query large tables.

Data is displayed in a Flex 4 interface using the AsyncListView collection wrapper class for data paging.

Motivation

• Provide people who start using SQL with a simple, inviting interface to improve their data retrieval skills.

• Get grip on the new Flex 4 data paging features, combined with Robotlegs to tidy up the client side code and Zend AMF for remoting.

Requirements

• PHP 5+ (5.2.4+ recommended by Zend)
• MySQL
• Flex 4+

Features

• Not really feature rich, but give it a chance.

Database structure at a glance

• Table names including number of rows
• Field names with type information and a special icon for easy identification of the primary key

Very simple query builder

• Click on table or field nodes to get the corresponding SQL Query

Query history

• Run previous queries

Limited large table support

• Run simple queries (including a primary) on tables with millions of rows.

Installation

1. Configure the Database

I suggest to create or use a user with just SELECT privileges to the database you wish to make accessible to the query browser.

2. Configure PHP access to the database

Set the user credentials for the database user in the php/DBHandler.php class.

class DBHandler {

    // Set database connection parameters
    const DB_HOST = 'localhost';
	const DB_NAME = 'imdb';
	const DB_USER = 'imdb';
	const DB_PASS = '*imdb*';

[...]

3. Configure Flex remoting

Set the remoting endpoint in the services-config.xml file.

<endpoint uri="http://showcase.to-fuse.ch/QueryBrowser/php/" class="flex.messaging.endpoints.AMFEndpoint"/> 

There is an optional configuration parameter found in class ch.tofuse.querybrowser.config.QueryRemoteConfig to adjust the (data) page size.

public static const DATA_PAGE_SIZE:int = 500;

Limitations

• Data paging is getting really slow with complex queries (without primary key) and large result sets
• Queries on tables with non-consecutive primary keys is possible, and can be enabled calling the designated method (QueryBrowser->executeSimpleQueryNonConsecutive()). However, data paging performance is again really lousy.
• ... and many more.

More

• Visit the blog post
• Check out the demo.