[kieransimkin]

When I'm designing a database, I often prototype them in a text editor before even touching a real database server, so I just end up with a text file containing a bunch of SQL statements like this:

CREATE table foo (
 id int(32) not null auto_increment,
 field1 varchar(255) not null,
 field2 varchar(255) not null,
 primary key(id),
 index (field1)
) TYPE=INNODB;

CREATE table bar (
 id int(32) not null auto_increment,
 field3 varchar(255) not null,
 field4 varchar(255) not null,
 primary key (id)
) TYPE=INNODB;

insert into foo set field1='value1', field2='value2';
insert into bar set field3='value3', field4='value4';

Etc etc.

I find this to be a straightforward way to design how my database is laid out - I often write the entire database in this way and then simply copy and paste the SQL into PhpMyAdmin. This way you also have a script for recreating the database from scratch which can come in very handy when testing.