Utility to create “data dictionary” for MySQL database

Question

I'm wondering if there is a utility that exists to create a data dictionary for a MySQL database.

I'm considering just writing a php script that fetches the meta data about the database and displays it in a logical format for users to understand but I'd rather avoid that if there is some pre-built utility out there that can simply do this for me.

Answer 1

Have you looked into HeidiSQL or phpMyAdmin?

Also, MySQL Admin.

Edit#1 fixed typo, added more info

Answer 2

Looks like MySQL Admin is now MySQL Workbench and you need the Enterprise version to get their reporting tool called DBDoc. It explains a little about customizing DBDoc reporting templates at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/workbench/en/dbdoc-templates.html

Answer 3

Take a look at https://stackoverflow.com/a/26703098/4208132

There is a db_doc.lua plugin for MySQL Workbench CE

[EDITED]

It seems that the LUA plugin support was discontinued. So I wrote a plugin in Python to generate data dictionaries. It is available at: https://github.com/rsn86/MWB-DBDocPy

Answer 4

The easiest thing to do is Download Toad for MySQL, which is free, and create your own query against the mysql information_schema internal database. You can add columns you want to the query below. Then select all results and export as csv using TOAD.

use information_schema;

desc columns;

select c.table_name, c.column_name, c.data_type from columns c where c.table_schema = "mydatabaseinstance";