i recently discovered chive from yii's home page, one of my most frequently visited site recently since i'm working on a project based on yii at the moment.

what is chive? from the site:

Chive is a free, open source, web-based database management tool, designed to bring joy to web developers - with easy administration, super fast UI and state of the art web technologies.

i downloaded a copy (v102) and have been using it for a few weeks.

i've been using phpmyadmin for many years to manage databases. i rely on it so much i've forgotten most mysql /sql commands. it provides a nice interface for most of my needs.

please note that this is not going to be thorough comparision. just a simple comparison based on my usage.

both are free, open source and web-based database management tools.

installation and configuration

both are installed by uncompressing the downloaded file and copying to selected server directory.

phpmyadmin requires configuration before using it (and requires some understanding of various configurations). chive runs out of the box.

user interface

both have similar user interface, but i like the default look for chive. it looks more modern and fresh.

phpmyadmin look dated but can be themed. there are also options to change certain appearances. chive doesn't have such option.

database manipulation

chive can only manipulate databases on the same server at any one time.

phpmyadmin, once configured, can access databases on different servers from the same interface.

chive does not have the 'operations' functions like phpmyadmin has. there are no interfaces to copy / rename database / tables. there are interfaces to run commands for such operations, but as i said, i've forgotten most of those commands and syntax. it's doable but inconvenient.

chive has interface to create store procedures and triggers with function template.

documentation and help

phpmyadmin is well documented (even in several different languages) and has quite a few supports and forums.

there are not documentation for chive (yet?) but there is a forum.

i don't used both forums much so i can't comment how helpful or friendly they are.

the verdict?

i like the look and feel of chive. it can do most basic database and table manipulations. but lacking the 'operations' functions makes it inconvenient, as there are many changes i need to do throughout project development.

chive is still new and has potential to grow. i'm looking forward to more improvements.

at this stage i will continue to use phpmyadmin. mainly because i work on several servers and it provides an easy interface to switch servers. i can't live without the 'operations' functions.