phpMyAdmin Plugins tab displays all the plugins which are presently installed in MySQL server. It contains information like their version and description.

Plugins are broadly categorized in six categories −

• AUDIT

• AUTHENTICATION

• DAEMON

• FTPPARSER

• INFORMATION SCHEMA

• STORAGE ENGINE

If you click on any of the category, it will scroll to the related list of plugins.

phpMyAdmin Charsets tab displays all the charsets and collations which are supported by MySQL server.

You cannot edit anything here. It is a readonly information.

phpMyAdmin provides an intuitive user interface to manage and set settings for its interface.

Following is the description of various sections of Settings tab.

• Manage Your Settings − Main Dashboard shows the Import/Export and Reset Options. User can set up a setup script to do this process automatically as well. Script provide more fine grain control as well. Saved settings can be exported in JSON/PHP format or to browser storage and in similar fashion, it can be imported.

• Two Factor Authentication − Two factor authentication is very important for security purpose. It enables to authenticate user with additional authentication mechanism like HOTP and TOTP applications such as FreeOTP, Google Authenticator or Authy or using hardware security tokens supporting FIDO U2F, along with password authentication.

• Features − Features covers the configuration setting related to databases, text fields, page titles, warning messages, console and general settings like natural order, version checks etc.

• SQL Queries − Options related to SQL queries like show SQL queries, confirmation on drop queries and configurations on sql query box like to show explain SQL, create PHP Code, refresh options and so.

• Navigation Panel − Options covering navigation panel, navigation tree and to configure display settings for servers, databases and tables display.

• Main Panel − Options to customize startup screen, database structure, table structure, browse mode, edit mode, tabs and relational schema display.

• Export/Import − Options to customize export and import settings.

phpMyAdmin Variables tab handles nearly 600 variables of MySQL where we can edit set them on/off and update their values.

Click on edit button, and you can edit the variable value.

After updating the value, click on save button or press esc key to cancel.

An important point to note is that these variables can be edited only one user logged in as root user.

phpMyAdmin provides an intuitive user interface to import database(s).

Choose a file to import. phpMyAdmin allows to import zip file as well as uncompressed file. Max size limit is 2GB. Click on Go button and phpMyAdmin will import the databases and show the success/failure/error messages accordingly.

Now select the custom option and phpMyAdmin will show lots of options like

• Partial Import − This option is very handy while importing large databases. It allows to prevent PHP timeout and allows to skip queries as well.

• Other Options − Options to check foreign integrity checks.

• Format − phpMyAdmin allows six differents format to be used in import process.

• Format Specific Options − Options to choose database specific formats. For zero values, auto increment can be disabled.

phpMyAdmin provides an intuitive user interface to export database(s).

Click on Go button and phpMyAdmin will generate SQL required to create databases/tables and other relevant entities.

Instead of SQL, user can choose other popular options as well like csv, json, yaml etc.

Now select the custom option and phpMyAdmin will show lots of options like

• Databases − A list of databases to be selected. User can select multiple databases.

• Output − Options to save output to a file with customization options like name, charset, compression. It also provides options to skip large tables, rename exported databases/tables/columns and so on.

• Format Specific Options − Options to display/hide comments, enclose export in a transaction, export views as tables, export metadata and database selection for compatabilities and so.

• Object Creation Options − Options to add drop database/tables etc if exists, auto increment id, add create view, add create trigger statements, using backquotes to enclose table and column names etc.

• Data Creation Options − Options to truncate table before insert delayed statements and insert ignore statements. Options to choose format while preparing sql for insert data, set the maximum length of created query, dump timestamp columns in UTC etc.

phpMyAdmin Storage Engines tab displays all the engines which are supported by MySQL server.

You cannot edit anything here. It is a readonly information. When we click on any engine name, it displays the details further. For example, when user clicks on the default engine myISAM, it displays as following −

phpMyAdmin Replication tab handles the database replication. Marking one database as master database and other as slave databases is made easy using this feature.

• Master Replication − This section shows the master status and connected slaves status. We can add slave replication user as well using this section.

• Slave Replication − This section allows to add a slave using username, password, host and port details.

Start the Apache Server and open /localhost/phpmyadmin phpmyadmin in web browser to open the phpMyAdmin interface.

As we have configured a database MySQL during , we”ve root user with password as root@123. Once phpMyAdmin opens up, you need to enter same credential to login to database.

Dashboard

Once logged in, you can see the following sections on the phpMyAdmin page loaded. The left section shows the databases available, it shows system as well user created databases.

On the right side, dashboard shows a tabbed interface to do all the database administration operations as shown below.

Databases

Click on Database Tab, to see the list of databases with more details. We can create database, iterate databases and do other operations here.

Click on any listed database to see the list of tables with more details. Tabs changes as per the context. Now tabs will shows as per the database.

Tables

Now in the schema browser, click on any table, right side section will load the table details as shown with updated tabbed interface to do various operations on that table as shown below −

Double clicking on any cell, makes it editable, where you can edit and save data. Pressing esc key, will not save data. Once you move out of editing cell, it will show the update query and status of operation as shown below −

You can verify the update statement as well as show below −

UPDATE `employees` SET `AGE` = ''28'' WHERE `employees`.`ID` = 1;

Now click on Structure tab, it will show the table structural details as shown below −

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.