Item: Navicat
Rating: 9
Author: Robert Gravelle

Overall Satisfaction with Navicat

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Although I retired as a Senior Full-stack Developer a couple of years ago, I still use Navicat Premium for smaller consulting jobs. At my previous job, Navicat Premium allowed me to access our various local and cloud databases from a single application. Now, it's just nice to be able to quickly switch from one database type to another.

Although I've heard from business users that they benefit greatly from the Visual Query Builder, for me, it's the auto-suggest feature that I like best. It helps me quickly locate functions, stored procs, tables, fields, and other database objects quickly!

Pros and Cons

Pros

Really helpful auto-completion.
Can connect to multiple (different) database types simultaneously.
Can generate some really impressive charts.
The new data dictionary tool is great!

Cons

A tad pricey for non-professional enthusiasts.
Free trial could be longer.

Return on Investment

It's made me much more productive.
I used to use a free tool like most of my coworkers. Never looked back since switching.
I saved some of my common SQL as snippets, which I reuse a lot.

Usability

There is quite a lot to learn because Navicat Premium is a very comprehensive database management and development tool, but it's User Interface is intuitive enough to pick up fairly quickly. I have also referred to the documentation on occasion, and can attest that it is quite good.
I feel that it works best on a large monitor, but that's fairly common for this sort of software.

Alternatives Considered

DBeaver, Rapid SQL and MySQL Workbench

Some of the free database clients are not bad at all. In fact, I have known a few developers who swear by them. However, I don't share that view. As a professional, I want a lot of features that you just can't find in free products, or at least, all in the same product.

Key Insights

Do you think Navicat delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Navicat's feature set?

Yes

Did Navicat live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Navicat go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Navicat again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Microsoft Visual Studio Code, GitKraken, Docker

Likelihood to Recommend

I was tasked with migrating data from our local PostgreSQL DB to an Amazon RDS instance. I expected this to be a difficult job, but Navicat's migration wizard made it fairly straightforward.
I think that it's more geared towards professional users, although not necessarily database practitioners. Non pros might do better with the new Navicat Lite edition.

Navicat Feature Ratings

Comments

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Navicat Premium: my tool of choice for 10 years

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