MySQL Shell For VS Code – Your New GUI?

MySQL Shell For VS Code integrates the MySQL Shell directly into VS Code development workflows and was released last week. This extension to the popular VS Code platform enables interactive editing and execution of SQL for MySQL Databases and optionally the MySQL Database Service for several simultaneous sessions.  It is a preview release and not ready for production but it does have several features that may make the MySQL GUI of choice.

Installation

The installation itself is easy but you will need to download the code from here and not the usual places for MySQL products.  You will, of course, have to have VS Code installed first, and be warned that some of the more tantalizing links for things like documentation are not connected.

MySQL Shell for VS Code installation screen and yes, you will need VS Code installed first.

Usage

The interface is familiar to that of MySQL Workbench but seems more intuitive.  You will need to set up a connection to your server with all the usual host, user, and password information. From there you can create a session to that server.

The big change is to remember to use Control-ENTER to send commands to the MySQL instance.  The GUI allows easy SQL query editing. But be warned there are problems with the preview.  A familiar query to the world database did not work with the GUI but ran perfectly with the stand-alone version of MySQL Shell.  Other queries worked well.

The first query was not correct. The second query went a little better.

For some reason, the first query did not get sent correctly to the server.

The correct answer to the first query.

Quick Take

This is an impressive product even though it is a preview.  This is far better than the old MySQL CLI and the GUI editing makes the very good MySQL Shell features extremely useful.