To reverse engineer a live database, choose the Database, Reverse Engineer... menu item from the main menu. This opens the Reverse Engineer Database wizard.
The first page of the wizard enables you to set up a connection to the live database you wish to reverse engineer. You can set up a new connection or select a previously created stored connection. Typical information required for the connection includes host name, user name and password.
After this information has been entered, or you have selected a stored connection, click the Next button to proceed to the next page.
Review the displayed information to make sure that the connection did not generate errors, then click Next.
The next page displays the schemata available on the server. Click the check box or check boxes for any schemata you wish to process.
After you have selected the desired schemata, click the Next button to continue.
The wizard then displays the tasks it carried out and summarizes the results of the operation.
Review the results before clicking Next to continue.
The next page is the Select Objects page. It
has a section for each object type present in the schema (tables,
views, routines, and so forth). This page is of special interest
if you do not wish to import all the objects from the existing
database. It gives you the option of filtering which objects are
imported. Each section has a Show Filter
button. Click this button if you do not want to import all the
objects of a specific type.
For the Import MySQL Table Objects section, if you click the Show Filter button, the following page is displayed.
This page enables you to select specific tables for import. Having selected the desired tables, you can optionally hide the filter by clicking the Hide Filter button.
The other sections, such as MySQL Routine Objects, have similar filters available.
Click Execute to continue to the next page.
The wizard then imports objects, displaying the tasks that have been carried out and whether the operation was successful. If errors were generated, you can click the Show Logs button to see the nature of the errors.
Click Next to continue to the next page.
The final page of the wizard provides a summary of the reverse engineered objects.
Click Finish to exit the wizard.
Before exiting MySQL Workbench be sure to save the schema. Choose the
File, Save menu item
to save the reverse-engineered database as a MySQL Workbench file
with the extension mwb.
During reverse engineering, the application checks for tables and views that duplicate existing names and disallows duplicate names if necessary. If you attempt to import an object that duplicates the name of an existing object you will be notified with an error message. To see any errors that have occurred during reverse engineering, you can click the button Show Logs. This will create a panel containing a list of messages, including any error messages than may have been generated. Click the Hide Logs button to close the panel.
If you wish to import an object with the same name as an existing object, rename the existing object before reverse engineering.
If you import objects from more than one schema, there will be a
tab in the Physical Schemata section of the
MySQL Model page for each schema imported.
You cannot reverse engineer a live database that has the same name as an existing schema. If you wish to do this, first rename the existing schema.

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