Navicat Premium: The Cat's Pajamas for Erstwhile Database Admins
June 29, 2019
Navicat Premium: The Cat's Pajamas for Erstwhile Database Admins
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Navicat Premium
Navicat Premium is the go-to database development tool used in my organization (Student Affairs IT). It is a cost-effective tool that enables staffers to query our on-premises and cloud-based databases (Oracle and MySQL as of this writing) for extraction and reporting purposes, as well as supporting database audits, schema modifications, and granular editing of table rows for maintenance, troubleshooting, and extension of our web applications.
- Navicat Premium is a great tool for managing multiple different database connections, as it supports a wide variety of database systems, including MariaDB, MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, and SQLite databases. Credentials and network information are easily configured and stored for multiple connections.
- Navicat Premium allows users to define and store queries for reuse, and it supports advanced job scheduling options, allowing the construction and invocation of singular and batched jobs. I use these features to run periodic schema audits on data warehouse tables to ensure our department's data dictionary remains accurate.
- Navicat Premium provides a robust data browser view that allows users who are not SQL experts to quickly and easily filter datasets, and directly add, update, and delete table rows.
- 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.
- Practically speaking, Navicat Premium has enabled our department to support database maintenance and extension, migrations, and customer data reporting and analysis requests, without requiring staffers to be database mavens, thereby extending our limited (non-profit) resources in a significant manner.
- In the long term, we may find our perpetual licenses will age out of usefulness, given that major version updates are (not unreasonably) unavailable for perpetual licensing. However, three years in, we've found it to continue to provide value. And going forward, should a major version upgrade be required, upgrade licensing is available at a reduced cost.
- As we are a non-commercial organization -- part of the California State University system -- Navicat Premium's one-time license cost is low enough to provide a great value for our department, given the large suite of features it offers; at current non-commercial pricing, one perpetual seat costs out at $599. If you are a commercial organization, the "enterprise edition" is what you'll need to purchase, and at $1,299 per perpetual license, it may be tougher to justify the expenditure. However, Navicat Premium's support for a wide variety of database systems does positively differentiate this product!
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.
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.