Pros

Following are some of the key advantages that phpMyAdmin provides −

• Web Based − Being web based, phpMyAdmin UI is accessible using Web Browser and this interface is available on all the platforms where a web browser can work.

• Graphical Interface phpMyAdmin provides graphical interface to run SQL commands and do SQL operations and makes it quite easy to use as compared to console based sql editors.

• Script Interface phpMyAdmin provides script interface to run PHP scripts to connect to databases and do customized operations.

• Multi-Server phpMyAdmin allows to operate multiple servers at a time.

• Backup formats phpMyAdmin allows to take database backups in various formats like XML, CSV, SQL, PDF, OpenDocument Text, Excel, Word, and Spreadsheet, etc.

• Complex Query Made Easy phpMyAdmin”s easy to use interface allows to create and run complex queries, create and edit functions, triggers etc easily.

Cons

There are certain disadvantages as well in using phpMyAdmin.

• Difficult Installation − phpMyAdmin installation is not straight forward. User needs to install Apache Web Server, PHP and MySQL and then configure each softwares seperately. As an alternate solution is to use XAMPP, which bundles them as a package and have phpMyAdmin module as well. In case of fresh installation, XAMPP is the best choice to install WAMP/LAMP stack to use phpMyAdmin.

• No schema visualization − schema visualization capability is not present in phpMyAdmin.

• No auto-compilation − Auto-compilation functionality is not available as well.

• No scheduled backup − Automatic backup scheduling is not feasible.

• No Encryption − phpMyAdmin exports database in common text files thus needs high storage and poor security.