CocoaMySQL is a sexy, free app for Mac OS X. It is a client-side interface for MySQL. Once I downloaded it, all I had to do was open it and input the host, username, and password for our MySQL Database. That’s it! The application so far is amazing. It performs much quicker than PhpMyAdmin (because it is a client-side application; phpmyadmin is server-side, so network speed and bandwidth becomes a bottleneck), and with a friendly Mac interface.

You can download it from the project homepage: http://cocoamysql.sourceforge.net/.

I think PhpMyAdmin and CocoaMySQL are both great tools, so I don’t necessarily see one replacing the other. They each have their strengths. CocoaMySQL is super fast, which makes it great for database querying and construction. PhpMyAdmin seems to have more strength for db insertion, as it recognizes foreign key relations and can provide a drop-down list of legal values for a given FK column. PhpMyAdmin (and DBDesigner4) also have the power to create schema diagrams, something CocoaMySQL can’t do (yet?).

Here’s a great article for other “sexy, free” apps for Mac OS X: http://joshuaink.com/blog/400/free-os-x-apps