I previously published stored programs to help implement a (more) comprehensive password policy in MySQL 5.6, building on the password complexity plugin now available in MySQL 5.6.  This proof-of-concept has been expanded recently, and the updated package is available here.  There’s a few notable changes to the earlier version:

Moved all created objects out of mysql system database

The mysql database is meant for system tables, and I try to keep everything not directly managed by the MySQL server out of that database.  The initial proof-of-concept implementation violated this principal – the

MySQL has the well earned reputation for ease-of-use and “15-minutes-to-success”, since we continually focus making the server easy to use. MySQL Workbench provides the visual tools for database design, development, and administration. However, many DBAs prefer using the command-line, and there are many tasks that require the creation scripts for doing the job.

To make it easier to work with the server, the latest release of the MySQL Workbench—version 5.2.31—contain a set of Python scripts intended to make the life easier for DBAs by providing easy-to-use utilities for common tasks, which were introduced in the blog MySQL Workbench: Utilities. The set currently consists of just a few utilities, but will expand over time.

The utilities available in the Workbench are:

MySQL Workbench is an extensible tool for database design, development, and administration – with support for python scripting and plugins, that can automate basic tasks.

Starting with MySQL Workbench 5.2.31, and with MySQL designers, developers, and administrators in mind, we’ve added a new plugin called MySQL Utilities. The MySQL Utilities is a set of python scripts that automate basic tasks. And as MySQL Workbench is about helping design, develop and administer databases, we’ve put the MySQL Utilities at your fingertips so you can quickly get to them and get your job done. Users will benefit from proven scripts, leverage the testing and ideas of the community and the experts at MySQL, and avoid having to reinvent common scripts…

Lets go on a quick tour…

The MySQL Utilities Plugin starts a shell that contains a set of python scripts that perform tasks such as copying, exporting, and

To automatically create Foreign Key relationships is a typical use case for developers working with the MyISAM storage engine. This has been a popular topic on the Blog and forums so we’re revisiting it here – with a new and improved plugin written in Python.

While the InnoDB storage engine supports foreign keys, MyISAM doesn’t, but developers often pick it for various reasons and leave the application to handle relationships itself. MySQL Workbench can be used to reverse engineer a database to a model to better visualize or maintain it. But since MyISAM doesn’t have foreign keys, databases that use it will be lacking a very important part of it’s structure in the diagrams. You can link the columns manually, using the relationship tool to link columns, but you can also automate that. Databases are usually created so that columns that represent relationships have names that follow some

In MySQL Workbench 5.2.26 a new query execution command is available, where query output is sent as text to the text Output tab of the SQL Editor. Some MySQL Workbench users liked the “Results to Text” option available in Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio. Cool thing is with a few lines of Python we implemented this command using the SQL Editor scripting API.

For full documentation on scripting and plugin development, refer to the documentation pointers page.

In this post, you will learn:

• Python script for implementing “Results to Text”
• How you can customize the script to deliver your own

Recently we have released Workbench 5.2.4 Alpha. This version has some new features, and amongst them there is Workbench Administrator plugin or WBA plugin for short.

The plugin aims to ease the managing process of server instances. What we offer with WBA is a simple way to check status, configure and control one server instance. Some parts will resemble discontinued MySQL Administrator.

And here is a short summary of what we will have in WBA:

• Start/Stop server
• Edit server configuration (my.cnf)
• Manage user accounts
• Monitor user connections
• Status/Server variables browsing
• Log browsing
• Dump/Restore

In this alpha we have implemented a subset, which targets local usage only. Remote management and administration is upcoming. The subset includes:

• Add new Server Profiles
• Start/Stop the Server
• Edit

Over a chat on the #workbench IRC channel, Collin Cusce has written a handy little Lua script to automatically create relationships (through foreign keys) for his reverse engineered database.

Reverse engineering the DB to import tables into a diagram was easy, but their database used no “hard” foreign keys and an ER diagram without relationships wouldn’t be of much use. So one option would be to individually connect each foreign key column pair by hand, using the relationship picking tool . But doing that for the thirty-something tables in the database would be too much work and something could be overlooked and left out. The other option would be to automate that, since all such foreign keys followed a naming convention like

As many of you already know, MySQL Workbench offers powerful scripting support and a plugin interface that allows anybody to extend the application or add new functionality.

The latest addition to the WB plugin family has been written by Thomas Henlich. It features SQLite compatible SQL export of your Workbench models.

Download it from his blog and please provide feedback on the forums.

• Thomas Henlich’s Blog
• Forum discussion

We are working on improving the scripting support in WB 5.2 and finally adding proper documentation so even more people can contribute.

Python support has been added to the latest version of MySQL Workbench.

In addition to Lua, you can now write scripts and modules or interact with the GRT shell using the Python language. The integration allows you to use GRT objects and modules mostly in the same way you would do with normal Python objects. The built-in grt module contains everything related to the GRT that’s exposed to Python, including:

• custom types for GRT lists, dicts and objects
• wrappers for GRT classes, that can be used and instantiated as a normal Python class;
• wrappers for registered GRT modules, that can be used like normal modules;
• a reference to the root node of the GRT globals tree;

You can inspect these objects with the standard dir() command and in some cases with help(), to access

Yesterday there was a short discussion on our public IRC channel (#workbench on freenode). It was about how Workbench handles Foreign-Key-Names.

Especially if you intend to use Synchronization feature (available in SE edition only) its good to have names for FKs (and their coresponding Indices). Workbench does that by default if you’re using the Relationship-tools (Hotkeys 1 to 6 when canvas is focused). But if you prefer to create your FKs in a not-so-visual way (entering the values on the FK-Tab in the table-Editor) you are on your own when it comes to naming your FKs. Though Workbench initially only accepts creating keys after you typed a name into the name-field theres still the possibility to rename the FK later to even empty names. If you try to create empty named FKs on a MySQL Server the server will generate a name for the key.

If you want to change FK names later, when your model