Likelihood to Recommend Navicat Premium is a very well-rounded tool with a reasonable licensing fee given its feature set. It is primarily suited for technical resources who must work with a variety of different database systems, but who may not be database or command line tool wizards. However, its query building and job batch scheduling feature support end-users as they build competency, and it continues to hold its value even as users outgrow their training wheels. Navicat is probably not so appropriate for DBAs and others for whom database development and management is already a career path; these folks have their preferred toolsets, both vendor-supplied and homegrown, and they might consider the additional licensing cost to outweigh the value they'd personally get out of Navicat.
Read full review We use SQL Compare to troubleshoot performance problems quite a bit since our data model is more like a template and not everything is 100% in sync and customization occurs between different client databases. We continually get pulled into performance issues and the developers will say Client A is performing different than Client B, why? Using SQL Compare, we usually find that one client was tuned and had indexes altered or added that weren't deployed to all clients or other objects weren't deployed correctly during the release. On the other hand, since our data model practices allow client databases to drift I tried to create a new golden image by trying to compare multiple databases based on the same data model and found it to be a very difficult process to complete using SQL Compare. SQL Compare gave me too much information and doesn't allow enough filtering to eliminate a lot of the noise.
Read full review Pros Access via standard html Alert notification Read full review Simple and easy comparison of database schemas and data. Differences can be copied or synced from one database to another with a click of a button. You can save "projects" so that you can easily rerun a previous comparison whenever you need to. It has a very simple, easy to learn interface. I've never needed to read any documentation or watch any tutorials in order to figure out how to do something. Read full review Cons Navicat Premium's documentation can be hit-or-miss, as there are several versions available, and it's not always clear which documentation is current for the version at hand. Navicat Premium's query building interface is not as easy to use or feature-rich as standard IDE and text editor tools, and I've had some issues in the most recent release build with queries auto-running in the middle of making edits, causing a lack of responsiveness in the inbuilt editor -- however, Navicat offers users the ability to edit queries via an external editor, which mitigates these issues to some degree. In the data browser view, paged data navigation sometimes behaves unexpectedly or fails to work whatsoever, requiring a session restart to correct. The process of saving a data export file is cumbersome, requiring navigation through several windows, and I believe it could be significantly streamlined to improve user experience. Read full review Pricing.... I wish there was an inexpensive developer version I could buy for myself. Portability.... I would like to use it from a flash drive so I can use it where ever I am asked to work. Unbundled.... This may be available already but I dont' recall I can buy it cheaply as a stand-alone product. Its only part of the bundle - cost effectively. Read full review Usability It's a good tool to have, but becomes expensive to buy a user license for each developer.
Read full review Support Rating Very robust online community and well as excellent support staff. Easy to follow video tutorials. Detailed sample configurations are provided with guided walk-throughs via remote classroom instruction. Very fast response from support staff. No internal hires were necessary for support as vendor support staff fully met all technical expertise. 24/7 incident reporting and tracking is great.
Read full review They have a great community website where you can search for answers but are also very responsive when it comes to direct support.
Read full review Alternatives Considered While
Sequel Pro is a great shareware tool, it's limited to MySQL databases; while our department does use MySQL databases, we also use Oracle databases, so Navicat Premium's multi-product support is an absolute requirement. Navicat Premium also provides data browser support, including filtering, to empower less technically-minded users to query and manipulate databases, an option not available in
Sequel Pro . And the job scheduling and batching features of Navicat Premium further distinguish it above the admirable, if limited,
Sequel Pro .
Read full review I've used Visual Studio Database Projects for this type of work in the past with some success, but Redgate SQL Compare is faster, more transparent, and simply easier to use. Faster is self explanatory. More transparent, means that it's much easier to set up your desired options for schema change deployment scripts. Easier to use, It's really dead simple. Start a project, connect your source, connect destination, click compare.
Read full review Return on Investment Similar features to OEM provided very easy to use, out-of-the-box functionality. No large infrastructure changes were needed to deploy and install. Read full review Makes deployment fairly simple. Cutting our deployment time down. With the SDK, we can customize our deployment process very quickly and easily. History is not great, it does create scripts you can go back and see but it would be nice to have a quicker version view by object to save time. Read full review ScreenShots