MySQL Administrator is a program for performing administrative operations, such as configuring your MySQL server, monitoring its status and performance, starting and stopping it, managing users and connections, performing backups, and a number of other administrative tasks.
You can perform most of those tasks using a command line interface such as that provided by mysqladmin or mysql, but MySQL Administrator is advantageous in the following respects:
Its graphical user interface makes it more intuitive to use.
It provides a better overview of the settings that are crucial for the performance, reliability, and security of your MySQL servers.
It displays performance indicators graphically, thus making it easier to determine and tune server settings.
Note that MySQL Administrator will not work with MySQL servers prior to version 4.0.
MySQL Administrator is to a large extent the result of feedback MySQL AB has gotten from many users over a period of several years. However, if you find it's lacking some feature important to you, or if you discover a bug, please use our MySQL Bug System to request features or report problems.