The Fabulous Sql Thingamajig

How to use it

Technical requirements

The Fabulous Sql Thingamajig is written in PHP. So it's necessary that your server runs PHP 5.3+. For calling The Fabulous Sql Thingamajig you have to use a recent version of a modern browser. The tool is not built in taking account of obsolete browser versions. Javascript, Cookies and web storage (also known as DOM storage) must be enabled, which are all default-options of popular browsers like Mozilla Firefox, MS Internet Explorer, Google Chrome or Opera. The software is originally built for the use with MySQL, but it should work with MariaDB as well.

Set the login data

First of all you have tell the program the login-data for your databases. These data are stored in the file “save/ini/connect.ini.php” as character separated values (CSV). Use for each new data collection a new row. A pipe (|) serves as delimiter between the individual values.

If you have not copied The Fabulous Sql Thingamajig to the target server yet, you have to do it now. Click on “Start running” and go to work. Attention: If you are running the program on a public server, you should use a HTTP-password-protection to avoid other people's access to The Fabulous Sql Thingamajig.

Select databases

All databases, the tool has found, are listed here. Select this one you want to inspect. For comparing databases choose two databases.

The Fabulous Sql Thingamajig makes use of an internal data cache, which stores the structure data of the last requested analyzes. To renew these data, you can clear the cache by clicking on the link “Clear cache”. If you select a new database or cancel a previous selection, the cache will be deleted by the software automatically.

The stealth-mode

Since version 1.5 of the software, The Fabulous Sql Thingamajig is equipped with the stealth-mode. You can enable/disable it by editing the file “save/ini/config.ini.php”.

Because of security reasons The Fabulous Sql Thingamajig generally does not show any database password. Instead of a real password the placeholder “*pw*” is shown. Over and above that in stealth-mode also hostnames, databasenames and logins are exchanged by placeholders (“*host*”, “*db*” and “*login*”).

Show structure DB1

Inspect the structure data of the chosen database. By clicking on “more” The Fabulous Sql Thingamajig shows the characteristics and attributes of the columns and the indexes of the respective table.

Show structure DB2

Just like “Show structure DB1”.

Compare DB1/DB2

This functionality compares the differences of the tables the databases contain. It does not compare the characteristics of their single columns! If you want to do this, you have to click on the link below the respective table comparison.

For showing the differences between the corresponding parts of the two databases The Fabulous SQL Thingamagjig uses the following set of various colors:

white:: No differences are detected in the section.
light blue:: In this section is something changed.
dark blue:: These are the explicit changes of the section.
red:: This section does not exist in this database.
green:: This section only exists in this database.