[gibbonweb]

lenny247, on 18 June 2012 - 06:01 AM, said:

Hi, im quite new to sql and im learning mysql. I have come across mysql workbench and i wanted to know how many people use it, should i learn to use it instead of php my admin and are there any alternatives?

I haven't used it but from seeing a few screenshots and from knowing how old and bulky PHPMyAdmin is, I'd say it looks pretty cool. I'm on Mac OS most of the time, where I'd recommend Sequel Pro over anything, but on Windows MySQL Workbench looks pretty cool!

On second thought, I should probably give MySQL Workbench a try on the Mac - the graphical modeling interface looks pretty neat. Thanks for bringing the subject up, I wasn't really aware of that tool!

[lenny247]

gibbonweb, on 18 June 2012 - 06:41 AM, said:

I haven't used it but from seeing a few screenshots and from knowing how old and bulky PHPMyAdmin is, I'd say it looks pretty cool. I'm on Mac OS most of the time, where I'd recommend Sequel Pro over anything, but on Windows MySQL Workbench looks pretty cool!

On second thought, I should probably give MySQL Workbench a try on the Mac - the graphical modeling interface looks pretty neat. Thanks for bringing the subject up, I wasn't really aware of that tool!

I recently come across it my self when i was looking into Agile development and UML. The last interview i had they talked about the use case, uml and work bench. I didn't have a clue what they were talking about, the only experiance i had about development life cycle was the waterfall cycle. Slowly im starting to find out more and more

On another note do any of you guy have any links to some good tutorials on Agile and UML.

Thanks in advance

[callumacrae]

I used it a while back, and didn't like it. Preferred Sequel Pro :-)

[TheEmpty]

I used it once to get a query that I didn't feel like writing. Forgot what it was. I just stay in the terminal. Our read me at work now has a nice list of MySQL commands because of me

[gibbonweb]

ThatRailsGuy, on 18 June 2012 - 08:25 AM, said:

I used it once to get a query that I didn't feel like writing. Forgot what it was. I just stay in the terminal. Our read me at work now has a nice list of MySQL commands because of me

Bad advice if he's talking about UML... there's no UML in a terminal.

lenny247, on 18 June 2012 - 07:34 AM, said:

On another note do any of you guy have any links to some good tutorials on Agile and UML.

Here is a goodlooking (from a first glance) tutorial to UML: UML Tutorial (Sparx Systems) . Sparx System build the UML modeling software "Enterprise Architect", so their tutorial might describe things which are specific to Enterprise Architect. From what I've seen at a first glance, it covers all important UML models from a software independent point of view though, so it should be a good read. Hope that helps!
I have zero experience with Agile though...

[TheEmpty]

What is UML?

[lenny247]

ThatRailsGuy, on 18 June 2012 - 10:08 AM, said:

What is UML?

Thats what i was like a few weeks ago.

UML - WIKI

[TheEmpty]

lenny247, on 18 June 2012 - 11:01 AM, said:

Thats what i was like a few weeks ago.

UML - WIKI

So just the diagram? (Why is it called a language than?) I generate these via command line and use "open {filename}" to view them in Preview.app

[gibbonweb]

ThatRailsGuy, on 18 June 2012 - 02:46 PM, said:

So just the diagram? (Why is it called a language than?) I generate these via command line and use "open {filename}" to view them in Preview.app

What you might be doing is generate UML out of your source code. Most people do it the other way around though, design the UML model in a GUI and generate code out of it. Tools like Enterprise Architect allow both directions, i.e. you can design your UML and it automatically updates your code - and you can edit your code and have your changes automatically reflected in your UML.

[Kyek]

I use Sequel Pro on my mac for all my querying needs, but one thing MySQL Workbench does (aside from modeling) that Sequel Pro can't touch is administration. Seeing currently executing queries, benchmarking them, watching the slow ones, force killing any that are taking too long, viewing table locks... All stuff I didn't care about until I had a really really big MySQL DB, but once you do, it's indispensable.

A lot of people try to make UML out to be more than what it is. At the end of the day, it's extremely important in a team setting to put your data models into some form of documentation that everyone can look at and quickly understand, and UML just happens to be a popular format solely because people were drawing their models that way already and someone came along and standardized it. So the main take-away is that it's the data model documentation that's important for the success of a data-driven team project; and if UML is how you do that, then great. But UML isn't responsible for your success, the fact that you're documenting your work is.

Agile is another broader concept. The base idea is that you set up a continuous integration (CI) environment. You write code, and for everything important to your app, you write additional code to test those functions. Then you set up a CI server like Jenkins, or use something hosted like Travis. When you commit, your CI environment runs your tests and lets you know if anything fails. If nothing fails, you have your code immediately deploy to either a staging environment (if user testing is necessary) or production. Once you have that environment set up, the other half of Agile is scheduling your work into sprints. Have everyone on your team working together in one functional area of the app, continuously integrating all the new code, and finishing that functional area in a set time period (usually two weeks). Then you move on to the next scheduled sprint. Sprints should give you enough leeway for things to go wrong or for developers to revisit/replan a certain concept that doesn't pan out in the coding stage, but if things start going badly, there's usually a mutual understanding that people are burning the midnight oil to hit the sprint deadline. As such, it's a model popular with startups and despised by 501 Developers.

As for me, I'm a fence-sitter. I think Agile is great as long as:

• The team can't be interrupted with other work, ESPECIALLY when that other work takes an amount of time that can't be easily predicted. You can't hold programmers responsible for deadlines that can become impossible to keep without some really unhealthy and morale-killing practices.
  
• There's an understanding that there may be a rare case in which the programmers will discover an issue with the plan or a service that needs to be redesigned to ensure a high-quality product, and in that case, laying different sprint schedule boundaries is acceptable.
  
• There's an understanding that changed requirements or miscommunicated requirements will result in sprints being changed to not destroy developers' lives.

(I've been on the bad side of Agile on more than one occasion )