Development of cross-platform GUI for Open Source DBs

Hello all

Let me introduce myself first. I am the ex-lead developer of SQLyog
(one of the most popular GUI for MySQL which is Windows only and runs
on Linux through WINE, more info at http://www.webyog.com)

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New Project: wxWidgets based cross-platform GUI for Open Source databases
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Motivation
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I have recently shifted to US to study for MS (and hopefully PhD in Univ
of Iowa). I have also shifted to Mac OS X as my primary usage machine
(after lifetime of Windows devotion).

As part of my coursework, I work with MySQL and PostgreSQL
extensively. I searched but couldnt find any GUI which has similar
power like SQLyog by any means. I have tried (and have tried before
also) various GUIs for respective databases but somehow the features
in them are restrictive and are not powerful enough for developers
like me who writes lots of SQL queries and needs to get things done
fast.

We can say that we already have enough GUIs for all open source
databases (open source as well as commercial) available in the market
but are they powerful enough to suffice the needs of an experienced
SQL developer as well as newbies. The top three problems with existing
GUI managers are:

- Most of the usable/powerful GUIs are not open source which is one of
the most powerful motivation for us to look for an alternate solutions.

- 90% of such GUIs are DB specific. It becomes very hard for developers
who work with multiple DBs as part of their work. It forces them to
learn different user interface/softwares to work with the respective
databases.

- Of the few multiple-db GUIs, 99% (or probably 100%) use JDBC/ODBC
layer to connect and work with the databases and JAVA or some other kind
of high level toolkit/language to develop the GUI. This results in
applications being bulky and slow and never able to provide the speed
that a low level C/C++ client API provide and are supported by all of
the standard databases.

A simple to use GUI for all databases
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The basic idea behind such a GUI is to develop a small footprint,
extremely fast, multilingual, cross platform administrator/development
tool for databases. One of the basic requirements thats this GUI will
fulfill is to allow a developer to efficiently execute/plan queries and
allow an administrator to quickly do jobs like backups/restores etc.
with fewest mouse clicks and across different databases.

Once the basic architecture has been set, I plan to extend it to support
advanced features like MS Access like form development, query builder,
scheduled backups, data synchronization, configuration management,
replication manager, user manager etc.

wxWidgets
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Since last couple of years, wxWidgets (formerly wxWindows) has
transformed itself into a highly powerful cross-platform GUI library
which when compiled gives the native look and feel of the host operating
system. This is something which other libraries like Qt, JAVA lack.

More info about wxwidgets can be found at: http://www.wxwidgets.org.

Yet unnamed DB management environment
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I dont have the time nor the resources to do everything by myself. As I
see, there are too many things which are best distributed among
people/developers who are good at those specific things. E.g. I will
require good graphics designer to develop the icons for the tool, web
developer to keep the website updated, db specific veterans to best code
individual db management code etc.

Also, it would be a great way to learn some programming and show it as
part of your undergraduate/graduate project development requirement :)

Is it viable?
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I am not too big a fan of reinventing the wheel or work on a project
which will go bust in couple of years? So what I want is from you people
a little initial idea and discussion about such a tool. Is it viable? Is
it OK to develop such a tool? Will people use it?

I am cross posting this to various db mailing lists as well as relevant
newsgroups to get maximum idea about it. You can also contact me
directly at riteshn(at)gmail(dot)com if you would be interested.

Waiting for your comments.

-- Ritesh