MySQL 5.7/8.0 does not allow creating a full-text index on a JSON column. Although a full-text index would be useful – unstructured data deserves unstructured search. I am unaware o any workaround of this limitation that does not require storing the JSON data twice. Then I started messing around, allowed indexing of JSON columns, saw great execution times but eventually followed MySQLs’ decision to call it a day. Friday afternoon rambling on indexing and easy hacking…

Why full-text: JSON indexing limitations and pitfalls

The current version of the MySQL Document Store is not yet optimized for performance. When we started this effort, we quickly gathered a long list of features that we considered a must have prior to any serious performance tuning. The teams focussed building infrastructure and delivered many …

Storing documents is convenient: no need to define a schema up-front, no downtime for schema changes, no normalization, no slow joins – true or not, you name it. But what about search if you do not know how your data is structured? For example, the famous SFW-construct requires listing the columns to search: SELECT … FROM … WHERE some_column = ‘Jippie’ . Given that JSON data can have no schema how to write a query without knowing any field names, where is SELECT … FROM … WHERE * = ‘Jippie’? JSON_SEARCH() gets you started but there are gaps if you think about it for a minute.

There are many reasons why you may not know the structure of the data you operate on. Maybe, you have gathered documents using different “schema versions” over time, maybe, there is simply no common structure because the data comes from …

Faceted search or faceted navigation is a highly praised and widely use search pattern. And, it is a great reply to an off the records sales engineering question. MySQL finally has some document store features built-in. A bit of a yawn in 2016. There is a new X DevAPI available with some Connectors. A bit of a yawn technically. But it is a non-technical change of mind: developer centric counts! Sales, all, technical value could show at non-trivial developer tasks, like faceted search.

Todays X DevAPI does not get you very far

There are great stories to tell about the X …

‘Synchronous’, multi-master, auto-everything – that’s the new MySQL Group Replication (IPC14 talk/slides) in simple words. After torturing PHP developers for decades with MySQL Replication there is now a new replication option which does not require read-write splitting. A system that does not know about slave lags and reading stale data. In theory, MySQL Group Replication is just about the perfect approach to run a standard PHP application (WordPress, Drupal, …) on a small cluster (3-7 nodes) in LAN settings. In theory, MySQL Group Replication improves both availability and performance.

MySQL Group Replication talk given today at the International PHP Conference 2014 (Munich) …

The HTTP Plugin for MySQL offers three APIs: REST-like CRUD, REST-like JSON DOCUMENT and SQL. The SQL API lets you run any SQL you want. Including, for example, DROP mysql.users if you mess up your setup. Insecure? It depends on your viewpoint.

It’s more than just another protocol…

On the first look HTTP is just another network protocol for sending requests to MySQL. HTTP is the protocol of the web. Whether you need to integrate MySQL in a larger setup and use web services for data exchange or you want to access MySQL from a JavaScript client that is restricted to HTTP/Websocket. HTTP is the natural choice. CouchDB convinced many when it introduced the idea.

It is official: MySQL listens to HTTP and speaks JSON. MySQL got a new plugin that lets HTTP clients and JavaScript users connect to MySQL using HTTP. The development preview brings three APIs: key-document for nested JSON documents, CRUD for JSON mapped SQL tables and plain SQL with JSON replies. More so: MySQL 5.7.4 has SQL functions for modifying JSON, for searching documents and new indexing methods! The download and documentation (also here) is on http://labs.mysql.com/, the slides are below:

HTTP Plugin for MySQL! from Ulf Wendel

What a buzzword bingo! The HTTP Plugin is just a HTTP …

The MySQL replication and load balancing plugin for PHP, PECL/mysqlnd_ms, aims to make using a cluster of MySQL servers instead of a single server as transparent as possible. Should you ever want to migrate your PHP app from a single MySQL server to any kind of MySQL cluster, install PECL/mysqlnd_ms and see how much breaks. A simple app, might need no code changes at all. Your APIs connect call remains unchanged, your query execution calls remain the same: one connection handle transparently switched to an appropriate cluster node (read-write splitting, weighted load balancing, …).

/* Or, …

XA transactions are an open standard for distributed transactions. A distributed or global transaction can spawn multiple databases. XA transactions come handy, for example, when data sets are sharded over multiple servers and a business transaction affects multiple shards. The free MySQL Fabric tools help to setup and manage a sharded MySQL cluster. The development version of PECL/mysqlnd_ms 1.6 helps with XA transactions. It abstracts SQL details and acts as a transaction manager. The PHP MySQL driver kicks in when things go wrong and XA transactions show their nasty side: blocked servers. Good news: this is a rare case. Bad news: a deep dive …

The development version of PECL/mysqlnd_ms now has an very early version of distributed (2PC/XA) transaction support tailored for use with clusters of MySQL servers. XA transactions can span multiple servers in a cluster to ensure transaction guarantees among them. In real life, there is always, at some point, a sequence of work on your data for which atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability must be given. The early generation of NoSQL sharding solutions has a weak spot here. How do you, as a developer, ensure a logical operation affecting two shards is either applied to both or none? Either you don’t …

A legend is born: PHP Unconference Europe, Majorca. Nearly one hundred witnesses exist. The #phpuceu combines the proven concept of an unconference with the beauty of the island of majorca. Within a day after the end of the event, one third had bought a ticket for next years issue (May 9-10, 2015)! We all knew for years, unconferences work. We finally have one at a place that is easy to get and is just about perfect for any kind of visitor. Goal accomplished. Just a detail, PHP (partner happieness program) was missing…

The power of the people

Unconferences give power to the people. Participants gather in the morning to propose sessions and vote on an agenda for the day. Sponsors and participants never …