I’ve been posting mainly about OSX for the last little while, but no worries, I haven’t given up on Windows…yet . Someone today was asking about a good WebDAV client and after searching around for a bit, it seems like there is really only a couple out there. But really none of them can beat BitKinex client in terms of features and “price”. Here is a short list of features (oh…and the price thing….it’s free:-) ):

• Site Navigation Without Freezing Windows
  Unique technology of advanced directory caching and multi connection/threaded directory scanning makes the non-blocking browse windows possible.
• Robust User Request Handling
  Resume and control in detail not only file transfers but all user requests – including file removals, moves, directory creations, remote edits, prints, etc.
• Indirect Transfers
  Allows users to transfer files from one server to another regardless of which protocol they are running (FTP->SFTP, WebDAV->FTPS, HTTP->FTP, etc.)
• Smart Messenger-like User Interface
  Does not occupy much space on your desktop.
• Properties Inheritance
  For easy and flexible configuration.
• Large Number of Supported Protocols
  Including FTP, FXP, FTPS, SFTP, HTTP, HTPS and WebDAV

I don’t know how they do it, but I would just grab a copy, if I were you .

 I’ve had this question a couple of times in the past few months (since I posted the command line version of this method here ). To make it short and sweet, yes you can use Putty in a windows environment to setup ssh tunnels. Here is the specific scenario with pics for setting up a tunnel to your mysql server (assuming mysql server is running on a machine that you have ssh access to) using putty. This allows you to run mysql-gui-tools under windows and connect thru ssh to your server, without having to open the server to accept connections from the network.

1. Download Putty full install package 
2. Run putty and your’ll see the following screen. Fill in the hostname of the DB server and choose SSH as protocol.

3. Go down to SSH and Tunnels options. Fill in 3306 for Source port, 127.0.0.1:3306 for local Destination port and click Add. This will forward (through SSH) all traffic sent to 127.0.0.1:3306 (aka. localhost:3306) to the remote host’s (DB Server) port 3306. You’ll see how this works in a second.

4. Now go back to Sessions, Give the session a meaningful name (eg: MYSQLTunnel) and click Save so that it’s saved.

So now you’re done. If you need to access your mysql server, first run putty, load the session we just saved, connect and you’re good to go. You can use any network based mysql frontend and even the ODBC connector under windows and point them at host: 127.0.0.1 and port: 3306, the SSH tunnel will then take the traffic and safely transfer it to your mysql server box. This way you can run your mysql server in local mode — where it will not accept connections from outside network — for safety reasons and have network access to it when you need.

Running and administrating mysql can sometimes be a hassle especially if you’re running a semi-secure environment. This usually means that your mysql server will not accept connections from outside and only localhost connections are allowed. There is a quick way of getting around this if you’re stuck somewhere and really need to use that graphical admin/browser tool to get to your DB server. All you really need to do is forward port 3306 on your local machine to port 3306 on the DB server through a ssh tunnel. Here is the ssh command you need to issue to start things up:
ssh -L 3306:127.0.0.1:3306 yoursshloginid@yourserver.yourdomain.com
Once you supply the password for the ssh session you’re in business, the encrypted tunnel is up and running. All you need now is to point Mysql Administrator graphical tool at host 127.0.0.1 (localhost) and port 3306 like the picture below:The only thing you want to make sure you get right is the 127.0.0.1, DO NOT use localhost. The tools you’re using automatically assume a local socket connection to the DB when you use “localhost” as the Server Hostname. Another thing is that all checks that mysql administrator does locally on the server files will not work (ie: the interface will report that the server is down since it can’t find mysqld.pid), but all users/schema manipulation works fine since they are network based.

If you have mysql daemon installed on your local machine (the machine you initiated ssh from) you need to change the local port to something else other than 3306 and the command will look something like this:
ssh -L 7777:127.0.0.1:3306 yoursshloginid@yourserver.yourdomain.com
In this case I’m using local port 7777 which means I also have to tell mysql administrator to connect through port 7777. You get the idea……