MySQL Workbench is coming to the Mac (and Linux). This program is a great database design tool, I use its Windows version to model relational databases visually. It gives me two kinds of very useful results:

• DDL SQL files that I can send directly to the MySQL database server to initialize my database schema
• database model diagram vector images that I can use for high quality output technical documentation and also for training and discussion purposes

Here’s MySQL’s announcement of the Mac version:

http://dev.mysql.com/workbench/?p=192

As they note, it’s a very early preview that’s probably not yet ready for production, but it already looks great and opens and displays my model file from the Windows version fine.

When I say it looks great I’m really a bit surprised because I expected a really ugly port like so often with cross-plattform applications (I’m thinking of the ugliness that is often QT and I’m looking in the general direction of Google Earth when I say this).

I saw some visual glitches in other parts of the interface, for sure, but overall it’s a positive first impression.