Category: HSQLDB

A lightweight alternative to DB Visualizer and Oracle JDeveloper

Its been a while, i’m using hsqdb. Its simple, its light weight and it’s in-memory!

I thought I knew everything about it until I learnt today that it’s distribution has many tools to offer which are quite useful!

I’ll discuss one of such useful tool:

  • DatabaseManagerSwing

“DatabaseManagerSwing” tool is useful for connecting to almost all available DBs in the market (Oracle, DB2, MySQL, Informix, Pointbase, Postgresql, ofcourse hsqldb).

It’s very simple and an easy alternative of  heavy weight db client applications like DB Visualizer and Oracle JDeveloper. If you just intent to connect to DB and run some SQL commands and see results then this tool is definitely a very good alternative, especially when your PC’s performance already sucks!

You can download hsqldb here.

I’ll try to demo the usage of this tool by connecting to my “MySQL DB instance” called “webchat”.

  • Ofcourse, 1st step is to start your MySQL database server instance.
  • Download myql jdbc driver jar from here.
  • Copy the above jar to “”%HSQLDB_INSTALL_DIR%/lib” folder.
  • Go to “%HSQLDB_INSTALL_DIR” & Start “DatabaseManagerSwing” tool using the below command: java -cp lib/hsqldb.jar;lib/mysql-connector-java-5.0.8-bin.jar org.hsqldb.util.DatabaseManagerSwing
  • Below window opens up: 
  • Now enter the settings as below: (Remember my DB instance name is webchat and my db instance is running in localhost). Click OK.
  • Now the tool should connect to MySQL DB as below:

Apart from native LAF, there is also a Java and motif LAF of this tool as shown below: