Use the high-performance SQL development tool "A5: SQL Mk-2" on Ubuntu

A5: What is SQL Mk-2?

https://a5m2.mmatsubara.com/

A5: SQL Mk-2 is a free SQL development tool developed to support complex database development. Developed with the goal of being highly functional, lightweight, and easy to use. In addition to executing SQL and editing tables, you can get SQL execution plans and create ER diagrams.

A5: Features of SQL Mk-2

• ER diagram can be drawn with GUI
• DDL for databases such as MySQL and PostgreSQL can be generated from ER diagram
• Entity definition document can be generated from ER diagram in Excel or HTML format
• You can connect to the database and reverse generate ER diagram and entity definition from table information.
• Saved files are text rather than binary so can be managed with Git

It has many other features and is a great tool for database design.

A5: Using SQL Mk-2 on Ubuntu

As mentioned above, it is a very useful tool, but it is a Windows application, and it requires some ingenuity to use it on Mac and Ubuntu. This time, I will show you how to use A5: SQL Mk-2 on Ubuntu.

Ubuntu version

$ cat /etc/os-release
NAME="Ubuntu"
VERSION="20.04.1 LTS (Focal Fossa)"
...

Wine installation

https://www.winehq.org/

Wine is a set of programs that aims to run Windows applications natively on Unix-like operating systems (POSIX-compliant OS) on the x86 architecture through an open source Windows API implementation.

Allows Windows apps to run on Ubuntu using Wine. If it is left as it is, Japanese fonts will be garbled, so install it together with winetricks that can set font installation etc.

$ sudo apt install wine winetricks

It seems that the font installation fails unless it is a 32-bit version environment, so specify the environment variable and start winetricks.

$ export WINEARCH=win32
$ winetricks

Select "Select the default wine prefix"

Select "Install a font"

Select "cjkfonts" and execute the installation

You may get a warning during installation, but please proceed as it is.

A5: Start SQL Mk-2

Download A5: SQL Mk-2 from the official website. Select x86 edition as it will run in a 32-bit environment.

After downloading, there is an exe file called "A5M2.exe" in the unzipped folder, so start it from wine.

$ wine A5M2.exe 

I was able to boot with A5: SQL Mk-2 on Ubuntu. It was displayed without garbled characters, and I was able to input Japanese safely.

Precautions, restrictions, etc.

A5: SQL Mk-2 is now available on Ubuntu, but there are restrictions due to running on Wine.

• Printing and PDF output do not work properly
• Excel output does not work (HTML output works)

I haven't confirmed it, but there may be other restrictions as well. Currently, from Ubuntu, I think that I will only edit the file and use the Windows version when documenting.

Other supplementary items

• If you want to use it on Mac, you may want to use EasyWine (unverified)
  • https://hirubokari.booth.pm/items/1669411
• Due to the above restrictions, I put A5: SQL Mk-2 on Windows installed with KVM on Ubuntu and use it by connecting with remote desktop from the Ubuntu side.
• If you want to use full functionality, this is recommended: thumbs up:

Summary

A5: I introduced how to use SQL Mk-2 on Ubuntu. It's a very useful and recommended tool, so even if you're not a Windows user, you should definitely try it: grinning: