software . lter.limnology.wisc.edu

Navicat is a "Database Administration tool purpose-built for simplifying database management" that "is built with an intuitive GUI which lets you create, organize, access and share information in a secure and easy way." It is available as a native GUI on Windows, OS X, and Linux. You can use it to directly access the NTL LTER database, instead of downloading individual data sets from the main website.

We use Navicat Lite version 10, the current release. Documentation is available online.

After you've installed Navicat lite, to create a new connection to our database to start querying, click the "Connection" button in the upper left, then choose "MySQL", then fill in these parameters:

• Connection Name: LTER (or whatever you like, this is just an alias for your convenience)
• Hostname: lter.limnology.wisc.edu
• Port: 3306
• Username: (email the Information Manager to request a username and password)

The left panel of the screen is an object browser, showing you your database connection and tables and views and any other objects your user account can see. The top panel is an array of buttons and tools. The right panel is list of objects that you highlighted in the left panel.

If you double-click a table or a view, it will open in a new window, which you can interact with to see and edit individual values (if you have that privilege). You can also write and save queries by clicking the Query button on the top panel, and then write SQL code to interact with the database.

More information specific to NTL LTER use cases will appear here in the future.