for developers

A self-proclaimed ‘old school database guy’, Cal Evans gives us an honest and pretty thorough review of the latest version of MySQL Workbench –worth your time if you’re not happy with the MySQL ERD tool you use now, or even if you are. He aims for a real-world simulation test of the workbench, with 18 applications open simultaneously on his desktop, with the test database being quite simple but shedding light on many of the products features. He covers the whole spectrum of his results from good to bad and concludes that while MySQL Workbench isn’t perfect it is probably good enough.

If this interests you, check out Digital Media Minute’s review of another visual database design system for MySQL, DBDesigner.

If your a user of the cross-platform (Windows, OSX, Linux) virtualization software Virtual Box, you’ll be happy to find the VirtualBox VDI Index.  While you’re there you’ll find hundreds of preconfigured virtual appliances available for free download. This looks to me like it’s the mother lode of virtualization software and even if you don’t know much about it currently or have a need for it, I would suggest bookmarking this page for future reference in case the day comes when you do. Virtualization and virtual appliances are becoming more relevant as time goes on; this virtualizer is targeted at server, desktop and embedded use.