maria-discuss team mailing list archive

[Zach Lym <zachlym@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm really surprised by the pushback against a MariaDB Workbench.

> Well, clicking around, selecting things, switching to keyboards, and so on, can hardly be faster than writing an SQL statement - provided that you learn ALTER TABLE syntax.

The CLI is *always* faster, but I can't remember the alter table
syntax because my head is full of JavaScript frameworks.

> But, apart from that, I think that we mostly agree on everything except one thing: the meaning of enterprise. In an enterprise environment a DBA needs to automate everything and write scripts. Also, as I wrote before and the author of that post also says, GUI's are not reliable, you never know exactly what they do.

This is why I sent my plea: MariaDB developers are all DBAs who are
only focused on fixing problems for other DBAs.  Letting Workbench rot
will forever place MariaDB as a second-class DB that can't compete for
mindshare.

> That said, I suppose that GUIs can be useful for someone, especially for developers and hobbyists.

This is so arrogant it's crazy!  Developers are what drives growth:
MySQL got a huge boost thanks to phpMySQL and Workbench.  NoSQL took
off because there was a built in REST API, native support for objects,
decent search, etc, etc.  A lot of relational devs make fun of
map/reduce as a crappy index, but it allows the single source of truth
to make *arbitrary* transforms.

Yes, it *sucks* when you have to beat a newbie into normalization
submission, but MariaDB doesn't even optimize view queries.  SQL
database could grow into an awesome onramp for the right way of doing
things, but MariaDB is letting its only decent UI atrophy.

Thank you,
-Zach Lym


On Thu, Apr 27, 2017 at 1:35 PM, Sales
<info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Apr 27, 2017, at 3:05 PM, Federico Razzoli <federico_raz@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Well, clicking around, selecting things, switching to keyboards, and so on,
> can hardly be faster than writing an SQL statement - provided that you learn
> ALTER TABLE syntax.
>
> But, apart from that, I think that we mostly agree on everything except one
> thing: the meaning of enterprise. In an enterprise environment a DBA needs
> to automate everything and write scripts. Also, as I wrote before and the
> author of that post also says, GUI's are not reliable, you never know
> exactly what they do.
>
> That said, I suppose that GUIs can be useful for someone, especially for
> developers and hobbyists.
>
>
>
> As far as the meaning of enterprise environment, look here:
>
> http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/42642/enterprise-environment
>
> I see no statement about writing scripts. If a DBA could truly “automate
> everything” as you state, them, they would be out of a job! :-) A DBA should
> use whatever tools are necessary and efficient for their job and for problem
> solving, period. If that’s a monitoring tool, then, use it. If that’s a
> command script, use it. I can give many examples of things faster in a GUI,
> but, it’s not necessary here. I was merely agreeing that it would be nice,
> as the OP posited. And you were disagreeing. I understand you could come up
> with examples faster in command line or scripts and I would agree with your
> examples, and I could come up with things faster in the gui. A gui is not
> just clicking. It can be used in the manner you are disagreeing with (to
> replace knowledge of alter table at a simplistic level), but it can also be
> used in many productive ways. They were used even in a fortune 10 company I
> used to work for. Even Oracle gives you one (not speaking of MySQL). I also
> count SNMP and other interfaces as GUIs as that is often the end point for
> their output. Such consoles are certainly guis and are very useful for
> seeing an enterprise wide view of how things are running. When you have
> hundreds of sites, kind of nice for a high level view with drill down.
>
> I do get what you are saying, however, there are better uses for guis than
> your examples. And I would certainly never advocate *only* using a gui, of
> course not. I would only hope for an enhanced (to provided better tools)
> workbench. And I do agree they are useful for “developers and hobbyists”, to
> which I would add potentially hundreds of thousands of small business
> owners, which are wannabe developers and not quite hobbyists as many make a
> living off of open source software and databases they are using. In that
> sense, the market for gui users could be much larger than non gui users.
> Which of course is getting closer to your statement about enterprise.
>
> I guess I will agree to disagree as there are so many flaws in what the
> article stated, each and every statement and conclusion is flawed. It’s not
> a good example! Maybe we do agree more than I initially thought.
>
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