The NetTuts.com site has a tutorial posted today walking you through the installation and configuration of one of the most popular and well-known PHP database tools, phpMyAdmin. In this tutorial they wlk you through installing the tool (via packages) and working with a sample database.

PHPMyAdmin (PMA) is an excellent free, open source web-based database client which can be used to interact more easily with MySQL and application databases. I'll describe how to install it, secure it and some common scenarios with which it can assist you in database administration. [...] In addition to offering a visual GUI for database operations, I also appreciate being able to run command line SQL operations via my browser without having to log in to the server via SSH. For example, some WiFi connections and mobile hotspots regularly terminate persistent SSH sessions, making database tasks problematic.

They use the apt-get package manager to get the tool installed on their Apache web server instance. They also show you how to secure it via a web server level configuration item via a htpasswd setup. Then the post gets into the usage of the tool - creating a database, adding users, backing up databases, editing data and testing queries right from within the tool.