MySQL Showdown: Querious vs. Sequel Pro
Administering databases is not generally an exciting task, it’s right up there with TPS reports and their cover sheets. So why then, are you using the command-line MySQL client to administer your MySQL databases when you have a nice shiny user interface provided by OS X at your disposal?
The people behind Querious and Sequel Pro asked the same question, and have come up with two different answers. Neither are yet at a ‘1.0′ release (Querious is close at 1.0beta2, Sequel Pro is at 0.9.3), however both are extremely functional and stable.
Compared to Querious, Sequel Pro has a relative long history, being an open-source project inherited from the now defunct CocoaMySQL. Querious on the other hand, is a brand new offering and is a commercial product costing $25 (a 30 day trial is available for download).
We’ll take a look at each app, pound for pound, and see who comes out stronger.
MySQL Server Version Support
The first, and critically important, difference to note is that Querious will only connect to MySQL 5 servers. This is potentially a big limitation (it is for me as most of the databases I work with every day are still MySQL 3) — so if you also need to connect to MySQL 3 or MySQL 4, Sequel Pro is the only option out of the two.
Concurrent Connections
If you want to work with multiple servers or databases at once, Sequel Pro presents a new window for each instance. Querious gives you the option of using a tabbed interface like Safari, or creating a new window, and is thus more flexible.
Browsing Databases
Sequel Pro lets you pick the database from a drop down list, then presents a flat list of tables for browsing. This is functional but does limit the visual overview to one database at a time.
Querious gives you a tree view with all databases which expand to show their tables. This allows quickly seeing multiple tables from different databases — the difference is subtle but potentially useful.
Both applications let you browse table records, allowing you to easily sort fields by clicking the column headers or filtering a specific field. Querious takes this one step further, allowing full text searches across all fields, or even specifying a custom WHERE clause just for that table.
Table Structures
Viewing and modifying table structure definition is much the same with both apps, allowing easy modification of table fields and indexes. Sequel Pro displays both structure and index on the same screen, while Querious splits these into two. The advantage that Querious has here is that it allows viewing and modifying the table and individual field character encoding. Sequel Pro doesn’t support this. Both have an easy facility to show and copy to the clipboard the corresponding CREATE TABLE query for the table definition.
Queries
At the end of the day, the most important feature of any database tool is how efficiently you can run queries. Almost any database task can be performed via a query, so any UI feature that is missing can be made up for by a strong query runner.
The huge advantage that Querious has over Sequel Pro when it comes to to running queries is syntax highlighting and code completion. The code completion will give you options to complete SQL reserved words and table entities. The syntax highlighting visually distinguishes reserved words from table entities and user constants, allowing you to spot typo errors quickly. Sequel Pro on the other hand, just gives you a plain text box.
Both applications support query histories, allowing you to click and see previous queries you’ve run. Sequel Pro does this with a drop down list to select a previous query. Querious lists these with a datetime stamp — requiring you to click the item before you can see the query — this could increase the time it takes to find that old query you’re looking for. Unfortunately, neither app allows you to go back and forth in the query history via keyboard shortcuts. On the keyboard shortcut note: in Sequel Pro you can type your query and then press enter to execute it. This should work the same with Querious (and does with an external aluminum keyboard) but it just ignores fn-return on my MacBook Pro. This is a minor bug, but is critical for every day use. Keyboard shortcuts are a must-have feature for me to use an app on a daily basis — stopping my work flow to move the mouse constantly just slows things down.
Querious and Sequel Pro also offer ‘Query Favorites,’ allowing you to store commonly used queries. Sequel Pro just uses a single drop down box again to select the query. Querious takes this further allowing multiple collections of favorite queries, giving each one a name. This allows you to group common queries by tasks or databases.
Server Maintenance
Querious allows editing users and allows full user privileges management with a simple point & click interface. Sequel Pro has no specific UI to handle this.
Both apps expose menu options to perform table maintenance such as analyzing, checking, flushing, repairing and optimizing. They also allow you to flush user privileges. The one thing that Sequel Pro can do that Querious can’t, is view the current server-side variables.
Importing and Exporting
Querious and Sequel Pro both allow importing and exporting databases or single tables in SQL or CSV/Tab files. Sequel Pro also allows exporting tables in XML.
Clipboard Support
You can select records (from a table or query) with both applications and copy them to the clipboard. Sequel Pro will copy these as tab delimited text, allowing pasting into a text editor or spreadsheet like Numbers, effortlessly. Querious goes a step further, providing an option sheet when copying, allowing you to specify the format to go into clipboard: CSV, Tab or SQL. The ability to copy records as SQL Insert statements is quite powerful, especially if you want to move specific records to another database or table quickly.
Verdict
When it comes to MySQL 5 servers, Querious matches and exceeds the features of Sequel Pro with style. If you don’t need to connect to a MySQL 3 or MySQL 4 database, Querious is just more polished and feature-rich than Sequel Pro and is well worth the small price tag. I hope they add MySQL 3 and MySQL 4 support soon, as I will start using it the instant they do so.
Gallery
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- Querious Table Contents Screen
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- Querious Column Screen
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- Querious Indexes Screen
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- Querious Query Screen
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- Querious Query History & Favourites Screen
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- Querious User Management
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- Querious Table Info Screen
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- Sequel Pro Table Contents Screen
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- Sequel Pro Column Screen
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- Sequel Pro Query Screen
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- Sequel Pro Table Status Screen
Tweet This (19)
Boris Strahija on February 27th, 2009 at 9:06 am
On a lot of sites I require a connection through a tunnel. Querious really looks great but it is missing this feature.
Does anyone know of an app that has tunneling. I’m using Navicat right now, but the UI is awful.
Staff Comment Josh Pigford, TheAppleBlog on February 27th, 2009 at 9:16 am
Boris: I’m pretty sure Sequel Pro can handle tunneling.
Shrop on February 27th, 2009 at 9:43 am
1. SSH Tunneling – Checkout http://codesorcery.net/meerkat. I actually found this earlier this week after starting to play with Querious and needing a way to tunnel. Works great!
2. I have also used Navicat MySQL. They just released a new OS X version. It’s UI doesn’t look as nice IMHO, but it has more features than Querious and Sequel Pro.
3. I may be missing somehting, but I can open different connections under different windows.
MySchizobuddy on February 27th, 2009 at 10:11 am
Both Querious and Sequel Pro, don’t seem to support Views, Stored Procedures, or Events
Navicat Does.
Preston Holmes on February 27th, 2009 at 10:42 am
I hope they DON”T add backwards compatibility support for older versions of MySQL. This is an open source project and time spent covering older versions:
Takes time away from other feature development
Limits the feature set to the “common denominator” across MySQL versions
Sure if there is a new developer that is passionate about providing support for older versions, thats cool if they want to put in the time. But the core dev, and guidance should be: “ONWARD”!!
-P
Kenton Glass on February 27th, 2009 at 10:43 am
I got in touch with Querious developer a couple of weeks ago and he said there was no immediate plan to support older versions of MySQL. That’s a big letdown so I’ll be sticking with Sequel Pro.
Staff Comment Josh Pigford, TheAppleBlog on February 27th, 2009 at 10:47 am
@Preston: I think you’ve got your apps mixed up bud. Querious is the app that does not support older versions…and it is NOT open source. Sequel Pro is the open source app that DOES support older versions. So it’d actually be in Querious’ best interest (in terms of additional sales) to try and support older versions if possible.
manuj on February 27th, 2009 at 10:50 am
I have found SQLYog to be the best of all MySQL clients. Unfortunately it doesn’t have a native Mac version but it runs perfectly in Wine. Here is a guide I wrote to accomplish that
http://www.manu-j.com/blog/run-sqlyog-mac-os-x-wine/148/
Raj Seshadri on February 27th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Querious is very nice looking, and promising. It’s very fast. The search options are decent and the data refresh is quick.
I tried Navicat, but it has a major UI issue in that it doesn’t cursor queries so if you open a slow view, or large table, you’ll be stuck for many seconds. Querious doesn’t have this problem from what I’ve seen.
View support is critical for me, so for the time being, I’m staying with phpmyadmin (run local + ssh tunnel to connect to db), which has very limited support (you have to do “show view …” to see view logic)… the ability to right-click a table/db and open a new tab/page with that context is supremely useful to me.
Raj Seshadri on February 27th, 2009 at 11:06 am
manuj,
What critical features does SQLYog provide that you find worth it to run it in Wine?
I have crossover and vmware, and have yet to find more than 3 programs I’m willing to run in virtualization, so I’m very interested :-)
Mike on February 27th, 2009 at 11:07 am
I’m sure I’m missing something obvious, but won’t let that stop me.
How do these tools compare to using phpmyadmin and why would one choose one of these, or similar tools, as opposed to simply using phpmyadmin?
Hilton Lipschitz on February 27th, 2009 at 11:17 am
Instead of either of these, I use SQL Grinder from Advenio (http://www.sqlgrinder.com/) which gives access to ANY database server (I have MSSQL and MySQL). If you are looking for a SQL front end, I recommend you look at it.
Josh Reisner on February 27th, 2009 at 11:42 am
Hey Hilton, with SQL Grinder can you copy tables and data to and from MSSQL and MySQL easily? That to me would make the price worth it easy. The MySQL ODBC adapter is pretty wonky with text fields and binary.
Mike, do you use PhpMyAdmin to administer databases? If so, you’re going to be really happy when you switch.
Andrew, this was a great column, thanks! Could we have a Navicat / SQL Grinder / Querious deathmatch next?
Mike on February 27th, 2009 at 11:51 am
Yes, I do currently use phpmyadmin; it meets my minimal needs, but I’m always open to learning new tools.
Are there one or two features of these alternative admin programs that would make me wonder why I waited so long to switch? :-)
Mike Wille on February 27th, 2009 at 11:54 am
I guess I’m trying to figure out why no one is mentioning MySQL Query Browser in these comparisons. I’ve tried all three and MySQL Query Browser (and the supplemental MySQL Admin tool) blows the others out of the water when it comes to supported features.
If anything is against Query Browser, I would say that it seems to have stagnated after Sun’s Acquisition of MySQL.
MGZ on February 27th, 2009 at 11:55 am
This may sound like heresy, but are there any tools like this for Mac that connect to SQL Server? I have to maintain some SQL Servers, and I hate having to go into Parallels just for that reason.
Josh Reisner on February 27th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
@MGZ: check out SQL Grinder that Hilton mentioned. I haven’t given it a try yet but I will.
@Mike W: excellent point, I forgot about that. There are a bunch of excellent features there. In my experience, it handles Cyrillic characters much better than Navicat. Please add to the showdown! I suppose it’s more targeted to running queries than designing tables or handling permissions.
@Mike: just try it. They do the same stuff but since these are desktop apps, the interface is vastly more functional and polished.
Eric Mockensturm on February 27th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
Querious is very nice but it doesn’t seem to support displaying the content (and editing) text blobs. It just gives the raw data (hex) instead of the ASCII like Sequel Pro (and CocoaMySQL) does.
William Macdonald on February 27th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Navicat has so many more useful features like the ability synchronise data & structure between two databases. This feature alone is fantastic.
Navicat also has the ability to connect via HTTP. So if you host does not allow connections on 3306 or SSH, you can just upload the supplied PHP script and you are good to go.
Thomas Yager-Madden on February 27th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
+1 on SQL Grinder – connects to any DBMS for which a JDBC driver is available (which, @MGZ, includes SQL Server – I use it a lot for that myself). @#13 Josh, I don’t know about copying from MSSQL to MySQL directly (or whether that’s even what you’re asking) – but in my experience SQL Grinder makes exporting from any source out to a delimited text file dead simple. From there you should be able to import elsewhere fairly easily, I would think. I use it almost every day and like it a lot.
Mark Jaquith on February 27th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
I couldn’t get it to work. It just hung when I tried to connect through my tunnel. A connection through the same tunnel worked great in Sequel Pro. That and the license/price made it an easy choice.
Mark Jaquith on February 27th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Clarification: I couldn’t get it to work in Querious. To be clear I was creating my own tunnel in Terminal, and trying to connect to that. That sort of thing shouldn’t require explicit tunneling support in the app — but I still couldn’t get it to work in Querious. ::shrug::
John Robinson on February 27th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
Sequel Pro doesn’t support tunneling yet, but I use Meerkat to automatically set up a tunnel for me when Sequel Pro starts up.
Franco on February 27th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Mike Wille: I use MySQL Administrator and MySql Query browser, but I believe Query Browser is stagnated because it will be replaced with MySQL Workbench. Workbench, now in beta for Mac, will add query support in 5.2, with 5.1 being the first Mac version (they have monthly updates, so there is work going on there).
Gavin on February 27th, 2009 at 9:52 pm
Not sure why Navicat isn’t included in this comparison – it is the leading mySQL admin tool IMO.
Don’t get me wrong, these other apps probably suffice for many people, but if you’re managing mySQL databases every day as a part of your job, Navicat is the #1 choice.
MySchizobuddy on February 28th, 2009 at 3:10 am
Navicat and other XX client wasn’t included in the comparison, cause it says
“MySQL Showdown: Querious vs. Sequel Pro”
is that title not clear enough for people.
Linuxwallpaper on February 28th, 2009 at 7:47 am
Does anyone know of an app that has tunneling. I’m using Navicat right now, but the UI is awful.
klip izle on February 28th, 2009 at 8:23 am
From there you should be able to import elsewhere fairly easily, I would think. I use it almost every day and like it a lot.
Sherrod on February 28th, 2009 at 10:31 am
I don’t believe I’ve seen this in Sequel Pro, but Querious allows one to export specifically the results of any query in various formats. What’s more, one can create a “document,” a sort of mock table. I have found this document feature to be very handy when trying out little bits of SQL.
MySQL Workbench on February 28th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
MySQL Workbench 5.1 (Beta 1) should be out March 6,2009. It will be available on MacOS, Fedora, Ubuntu, Windows. These are *native* C++ implementations on each platform. WB 5.1 is focused on Data Modeling (replacing Mike Zinner’s popular DBDesigner product).
MySQL Workbench 5.2 (Alpha 1) should be out mid April 2009 (around the MySQL Users Conference 2009). This will include a ground up rewrite of the MySQL Query Browser.
We are looking for MacOS user testing/feedback.
http://forums.mysql.com/index.php?151
manuj on February 28th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
@Raj: Overall ease of use. Everything I have to do while administering a DB (run queries, take backup, browse data etc etc) was intuitive and easy in SQLYog. Try it for a week. Everyone who I have introduced it into loves it.
AppBeacon on March 1st, 2009 at 12:52 am
@Raj Seshadri “What critical features does SQLYog provide that you find worth it to run it in Wine?”
- Schema Designer
- Scheduled Backups – not really useful unless you keep it open all the time.
- SQL Formatting, syntax highlighting, and completion
- STABLE
- Backup and Restore
- Migrate data from one server to another
- !! Profiler – Watch the video on the Webyog home page.
I just installed SQLYog via Crossover. It works perfectly. It’s amazingly fast on my 3 year old MBP. I think running SQLYog virtualized is faster than Querious and SequelPro running natively.
I paid a lot of money for Navicat about 2 years ago. I used it for about a month and just went back to the command line. The interface was just too cumbersome. I tried the newest version about 2 months ago. I didn’t find it any better.
SQLYog is the best MySQL GUI for Windows and Mac.
Martin Westin on March 1st, 2009 at 9:37 am
+1 for Navicat, even though it may be considered OT.
I have used CocoaMySQL and agree that the GUIs on both these are a lot more friendly than Navicat. But I need more than the short list of features compared here. I do migrations a lot and really can’t imagine dealing with migrations without Navicat.
I tested everything that would install on my Mac and nothing else could do a migration. A lot of them claimed they cold and gave it a try but failed miserably by ignoring some changes. A migration feature that ignores changes is a lot more dangerous than no migration feature at all, so I can understand why these two may still be polishing on that important feature.
just my 2¢
Marcus Bointon on March 2nd, 2009 at 10:47 am
Neither of these apps are any use at all if your have a moderately large database. Click on a table and it will try to show you the contents of it, which is a very bad thing if it’s a 100-million-record table taking 60Gb. What’s worse is that they don’t cache any of these views, so every click can result in a long wait, even from localhost. They should dynamically extract subsets to populate the scrolling view, just like Dojo’s datagrid. In the mean time, I’m very happy with the mysql cli client and phpmyadmin which don’t suffer this problem.
Garrett Albright on March 2nd, 2009 at 11:15 pm
Marcus, I can’t speak about Querious, but Sequel Pro lets you set a maximum number of rows to be fetched when it opens a table. I keep it set to around 10,000. The window will let you know if it’s showing fewer rows than are actually in the table; it says something like “X of Y rows shown.”
Sequel Pro is promising Postgres and SQLite support in the future, which I think will be a great benefit to those who are able to move beyond MySQL, the Windows of the database world (ubiquitous but rather crappy).
Andy MacKinlay on March 2nd, 2009 at 11:23 pm
Would like to point out that Sequel Pro does offer code completion (triggered using the escape key) for sql reserved words and table names (although admittedly it seems to not complete on column names, which impairs it’s usefulness somewhat).
As for the MySQL client tools – I haven’t tried them for quite a few months but for quite some time it seemed that on OS X pre-alphas had accidentally been released as production-ready – they were buggy to the point of unusability.
AppBeacon on March 3rd, 2009 at 12:00 am
@Garrett “MySQL, the Windows of the database world (ubiquitous but rather crappy).” Wow! That’s going to cause a bit of a stir here.
Lui-g on March 4th, 2009 at 2:12 am
In Querious beta 3, the clipboard feature you mention seems to have omitted the “copy as SQL” option – only CSV and TAB are shown on my PowerPC/Leopard machine.
Can anyone recommend a tool on Mac/Windows that can do this – I think this feature would save me a lot of time.
Thanks in advance.
Peter N Lewis on March 5th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
For SSH Tunnelling, I use SSH Tunnel Manager . Version 2.0b3 has been around since 2004, so I guess its not being updated, and it is a bit clunky, but it works fine, plust it has source if you need to patch it up later (it is PowerPC only though).
Steven Audette on March 13th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
A quick trick for Sequel Pro, you can “name” your queries by adding a simple SQL comment to the beginning of the query. Makes it easier to pick a query out of both history and favorites:
/* Average Orders */ select avg(price) from orders
aleckinnear on March 19th, 2009 at 9:33 am
Sequel Pro is great. Really quick and attractive. You can just zip in and fix those WordPress posts and pages instantly.
It’s commercial level software as open source. In line with that, I donated.
MySQL Workbench on March 20th, 2009 at 8:45 pm
MySQL Workbench 5.1 is now Feature Complete – Mac OS, Linux, Win.
Download:
http://forums.mysql.com/read.php?153,253777
Stuart Wilkes on April 8th, 2009 at 7:10 am
Querious now supports tunneling without having to go through the terminal. it sems a far more robust and less buggy app to me – I tried using Sequel Pro day to day, but after a week of using the Querious demo, I cam to the conclusion it’s definitely worth coughing up the money for.
Staff Comment Andrew Bednarz, TheAppleBlog on April 8th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
The minute Querious supports MySQL 3 and 4, I’ll buy it. Until then its unfortunately useless to me :(
Henry James on April 23rd, 2009 at 2:46 am
I found your blog on Google. I’ve bookmarked it and will watch out for your next NLP blog post.
Darren Cornwell on October 20th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Great post. I use both of these apps on a daily basis. They both have their ups and downs but for my (All DB’s are MySQL5) Querious does a far better job of importing data. A couple of times Sequel Pro has crapped out on me and failed, but Querious has never had a problem.
Reda B. on October 28th, 2009 at 4:35 am
I have been working with sequel pro. And it has all i need for now. When Sequel Pro reaches 1.0 i’m pretty sure it will be the defacto os x gui for mysql !