Since MySQL 5.7 one can put indexes on expressions, aka functional indexes, using generated columns. Basically you first need to use the generated column to define the functional expression, then indexed this column.

Quite useful when dealing with JSON functions, you can find an example here and the documentation there.

Starting with MySQL 8.0.13 we have now an easiest way to create functional indexes (or functional key parts as mentioned in the documentation) \o/

Let’s see how with a quick practical example.

A Guest Post from Jordan Raine, Clio

Jordan Raine is a staff software developer at Clio, the leading provider of legal practice management, client relationship management, and client intake software. Clio is dedicated to helping lawyers meet client needs and run efficient, profitable practices. Jordan wrote this post to help mySQL developers save time/effort and ultimately improve their customers' experience. 

Unlike most code a developer writes, writing SQL only requires us to describe what data we want and not how to get it. When given a query like SELECT id, author_id FROM posts WHERE author_id = 123 ORDER BY id, you needn’t concern yourself with what indexes are used (if any), what type of sort is used, or any other number of implementation details. Instead, the query optimizer handles this for you. This keeps SQL concise and …

Narrowing down which queries to optimize is a step in database administration that is often skipped - however it shouldn't be!  

Why is selecting the right queries to optimize so important? There are several reasons. 

Penny-Wise, Pound-Foolish  Look at the forest, not just the trees, and optimize globally, not locally. If you’re optimizing a query that never causes a user-visible problem, doesn’t impact other queries, and doesn’t significantly load servers, you might be “optimizing” things that don’t matter, spending more money than you save. Your time has value, too! Keep in mind, too, that optimizing a query that generates only 1% of the database’s overall load will not be a significant benefit to the bottom line.   Whack-A-Mole Queries It’s very common to  find a slow query in a log file, try re-executing it and  then find that it is fast. …

Join Percona’s Chief Evangelist, Colin Charles as he presents Differences Between MariaDB and MySQL on Wednesday, January 24, 2018, at 7:00 am PST (UTC -8) / 10:00 am EST (UTC -5).

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Tags: MariaDB, MySQL, Percona Server for MySQL, DBA, SysAdmin, DevOps
Experience Level: Novice

MariaDB and MySQL. Are they syntactically similar? Where do these two query languages differ? Why would I use one over the other?

MariaDB is on the path of gradually diverging from MySQL. One obvious example is the internal data …

Join Percona’s Product Manager Michael Coburn as he presents MySQL Troubleshooting and Performance Optimization with Percona Monitoring and Management (PMM) Part 2 on Thursday, January 18, 2018, at 11:00 am PST / 2:00 pm EST (UTC-8).

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Tags: Percona Monitoring and Management, PMM, Monitoring, MySQL, Performance, Optimization, DBA, SysAdmin, DevOps
Experience Level: Expert

Optimizing MySQL performance and troubleshooting MySQL problems are two of the most critical and challenging tasks for …

Thank you for attending my webinar on Wednesday, December 20, 2017, InnoDB Performance Optimization. In this blog, I will provide answers to the Q & A for the webinar.

Are the T2 CPUs similar to the M4 series?

I would expect them to be similar. Amazon does not disclose what specific version of CPUs they use for T2 instances. More details are available here.

Delay in spinlock code is pretty old code. Need to optimize based on today’s CPU? Your views?

There have been a number of improvements to the InnoDB Spinlock code during the last few years. For example, using CPU wait …

The website or mobile app is the storefront for participating in the modern digital era. It’s your portal for inviting users to come and survey your products and services. Much attention focuses on front-end development; this is where the HMTL5, CSS, and JavaScript are coded to develop the landing page that everyone sees when they visit your site.

But the real magic happens on the backend. This is the ecosystem that really powers your website. One writer has articulated this point very nicely as follows:

The technology and programming that “power” a site—what your end user doesn’t see but what makes the site run—is called the back end. Consisting of the server, the database, and the server-side applications, it’s the behind-the-scenes functionality—the brain of a site. …

As part of our support services, we do a lot of query optimization. This is where most performance gains come from. Here’s an example of the work we do.

Some days ago a customer arrived with the following table:

CREATE TABLE `infamous_table` (
  `id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `member_id` int(11) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
  `email` varchar(200) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
  `msg_type` varchar(255) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
  `t2send` int(11) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
  `flag` char(1) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
  `sent` varchar(100) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
  KEY `f` (`flag`),
  KEY `email` (`email`),
  KEY `msg_type` (`msg_type`(5)),
  KEY `t_msg` (`t2send`,`msg_type`(5))
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1

And a query that looked like this:

SELECT COUNT(*)
  FROM `infamous_table`
 WHERE `t2send` > 1234
   AND …

Sometimes we are not sure if the database design we have created and our site has been using is correct and optimised. We all do have this feeling at times don't we :)


Well, MySQL provides with PROCEDURE ANALYSE() to help us detect inconsistencies in our database design by suggesting for an optimal datatype and data length for columns.

The syntax for using PROCEDURE ANALYSE() is as below:

SELECT ... FROM ... WHERE ... PROCEDURE
ANALYSE([max_elements,[max_memory]])

Ref: …

Welcome to another post in the series of Percona Live featured tutorial speakers blogs! In these blogs, we’ll highlight some of the tutorial speakers that will be at this year’s Percona Live conference. We’ll also discuss how these tutorials can help you improve your database environment. Make sure to read to the end to get a special Percona Live 2017 registration bonus!

In this Percona Live featured tutorial, we’ll meet Øystein Grøvlen, Senior Principal Software Engineer at Oracle. His tutorial is on How to Analyze and Tune MySQL Queries for Better Performance. SQL query …