MySQL Administration Tools

Michael — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 14:13:51 +0000

Being forced to work with MySQL Databases, not every Web Developer is familiar with databases in general.

Now the good news is that when working in a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) environment you do not really need to have deep knowledge about relational databases to succeed.

Most tools like CMS do a full automated setup for you and the only knowledge it needs to have starting with them, is the server and database name and finally the login credentials (username/password) to access it.

Just later on the one or other maintenance work will occur and you will feel the need of having some nice and neat database interface to work with. Knowing about this need today I will recommend you a few tools and you should feel free to choose one or each of them based on your platform and taste.

The first tool I will recommend you is called phpMyAdmin. It is written in PHP and as a so called browser tool it works platform independent and flawless in all common browsers. Very often being offered by hosting providers it is mostly already part of your hosting package and easy to access and use. Coming along with all necessary options like browsing and navigating through your databases, it also offers a SQL interface and the often necessary export/import options. Personally it is my favorite tool to work with.

Once you are familiar with phpMyAdmin, phpMyBackupPro is another very similar tool you might find it worth to look at. Also browser based it is mainly written for interactive exports and imports, but can get also use for scheduled automatic backups.

For Windows platform only I would like to recommend you a tool called MyDB Studio. Coming along with a well designed interface it offers all features you need and the license it needs is given away for free in case you only use it for private and non commercial interests. It just needs you to give them a valid email address and the key is emailed to you quickly after.

And now finally and last in case you are such a Macintosh guru, I would like to recommend you CocoaMySQL. It does a similar great job like the others and can get used right away after the installation has taken place. What I like is the console view of is, showing you all command issued during the past and looking at it you might even learn some SQL (Structured Query Language).

PHP Settings in a Shared Environment

Michael — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 15:42:39 +0000

Working with LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) Applications we sooner or later do run into the need to change our actual runtime environment for it. Mostly based on specific PHP settings an application does need to be able to run first, we have to specify, change or increase PHP default settings, but do feel somewhat handicapped within a shared hosting environment. Usually Admins there do not allow everybody allow to modify or hack their central configuration files on the server.

But also for this situation clever developers have thought about a trick to help their community to overcome such hassle.

As a matter of fact it is possible to change PHP configuration settings within .htaccess very easily for everyone.

For example it is possible to

Prevent Global Variable Injection Attacks with:

php_flag register_globals off

Prevent Cross Site Scripting (XSS) Attacks with:

php_flag allow_url_fopen off

Prevent Code Injection Attacks with:

php_flag magic_quotes_gpc on

To do so

1. Open the .htaccess file located in your site’s home directory, or if you don’t have one, create a blank one now.

2. Add any of the following code samples to your .htaccess file, each on it’s own line.

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MySQL Administration Tools

PHP Settings in a Shared Environment