Just a quick tip you might be using this already.

If you guys want to open your app’s DB shell. Then you can use rails utility ‘dbconsole’ by issuing “script/dbconsole” from rails root directory.

It will ask for DB password, and open your db shell.

If you use sake, you may like following sake task:

desc 'Launches the database shell using the values defined in config/database.yml'
task 'db:shell', :needs => [ 'environment' ] do
  config = ActiveRecord::Base.configurations[(RAILS_ENV or "development")]
  command = ""
  case config["adapter"]
  when "mysql" then
    (command << "mysql ")
    (command << "--host=#{(config["host"] or "localhost")} ")
    (command << "--port=#{(config["port"] or 3306)} ")
    (command << "--user=#{(config["username"] or "root")} ")
    (command << "--password=#{(config["password"] or "")} ")
    (command << config["database"])
  when "postgresql" then
    puts("You should consider switching to MySQL or get off your butt and submit a patch")
  else
    (command << "echo Unsupported database adapter: #{config["adapter"]}")
  end
  system(command)
end