PHP provides a handy function, empty(), that is used to determine whether a variable is empty. Perhaps that is a bit confusing to someone unfamiliar with the empty() function and I can see how. In this blog post, I will cover: what empty() means in PHP, what the empty() function does, and a use case pairing up empty() with the PHP ternary operator conditional construct. Both used in combination with the MySQL NULL value. Continue reading and see examples of empty()…

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I’m glad that testing new MySQL releases is so frequent for me. Each testing cycle let me catch warning messages about deprecated behaviors before they’re removed. This one announced the deprecation of digits for floating point data types, like double. The following column definition for a table in my code tree triggered the warning message:

, amount                DOUBLE(10,2)

MySQL 8 (8.0.21) raised the following warning message:

Warning (code 1681): Specifying number of digits for floating point data types is deprecated and will be removed in a future release.

Recognizing the deprecation, I redefined the column as:

, amount                DOUBLE

I’m glad the MySQL development team is focused on alerting us to deprecations through warning messages. Naturally, I fixed all of …

In Use MySQL BLOB column with PHP to store .pdf file, I covered an example of how to store a .pdf file in the actual database table using the MySQL BLOB datatype and PHP. Now that we have .pdf’s stored in the database, how do we display them in the browser? This blog post answers that exact question. Continue reading to see a working example using PHP…

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Self-Promotion:

If you …

I’ve been experimenting with the mysqlsh since installing it last week. It’s been interesting. Overall, I’m totally impressed but I did find a problem with how it parses stored procedures.

First thought is always, is it my code? I checked the file by running it as a script file through MySQL Workbench. It ran perfectly in MySQL Workbench but failed repeatedly when run from the mysqlsh utility. Next step, reduce the code to a small test case, retest it, and log a bug if it is replicated. My test case in a test.sql file generates the following errors when run from the mysqlsh utility:

 MySQL  localhost:33060+ ssl  studentdb  SQL > source test.sql
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.0003 sec)
ERROR: 1064: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the …

It’s always interesting when I upgrade from one release to the next. I learn new things, and in the case of MySQL’s installation and maintenance I become more grateful for the great team of developers working to produce MySQL 8.

A warning that caught my eye in MySQL 8 (8.0.21) was this one on Unicode with the utf8 character code:

Warning (code 3719): 'utf8' is currently an alias for the character set UTF8MB3, but will be an alias for UTF8MB4 in a future release. Please consider using UTF8MB4 in order to be unambiguous.

Currently, a character alias for utf8mb3 is an alias for the deprecated utf8mb3 (a 3-byte character set) until it is removed. When the utf8mb3 character set is …

I’ve been using MySQL 8 on Linux for a couple years but the Linux repository version didn’t install the new MySQL Shell. So, I discovered the new MySQL Shell when I installed MySQL 8 (8.0.21) on Windows to teach my student how to use it to learn SQL commands. I encourage you to read the full MySQL Shell document.

The following is a tutorial to provision a student user and studentdb database in MySQL. It uses the MySQL Shell (mysqlsh) and stages for uploads of comma-separated values files.

After installing MySQL on the Windows 10 OS, open the Window OS Command Line Interface (CLI) shell by entering the following in the search field at the bottom left:

cmd

It launches a CLI interface to the Windows OS. The cmd (command) utility opens the CLI in the following …

I’ve been using MySQL 8 on Linux for a couple years but the Linux repository version didn’t install the new MySQL Shell. So, I discovered the new MySQL Shell when I installed MySQL 8 (8.0.21) on Windows to teach my student how to use it to learn SQL commands. I encourage you to read the full MySQL Shell document.

The following is a tutorial to provision a student user and studentdb database in MySQL. It uses the MySQL Shell (mysqlsh) and stages for uploads of comma-separated values files.

After installing MySQL on the Windows 10 OS, open the Window OS Command Line Interface (CLI) shell by entering the following in the search field at the bottom left:

cmd

It launches a CLI interface to the Windows OS. The cmd (command) utility opens the CLI in the following …

While preparing a set of student instructions to create a MySQL 8 (8.0.21) Windows 10 instance I found an error with LOAD command and the --secure-file_priv variable set in the my.ini file. After granting the global FILE permission to the previously provisioned student user:

GRANT FILE ON *.* TO 'student'@'localhost';

Any attempt to run the following command failed:

LOAD DATA INFILE 'C:\ProgramData\MySQL\MySQL Server 8.0\Uploads\avenger.csv'
INTO TABLE avenger
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ','
ENCLOSED BY '"'
ESCAPED BY '\\'
LINES TERMINATED BY '\r\n';

and, raise this error message:

ERROR: 1290: The MySQL server is running with the --secure-file-priv option so it cannot execute this statement

The following covers my exploration to try and fix this error without removing a designated directory for secure file uploads. While MySQL 5.7 …

The MySQL UNIQUE constraint is often used in a column definition in which we need each value for that column to be distinct from the others. Perhaps it is an email column for an on-line registration form and we want to ensure that users cannot register twice for an account using the same email. Whatever the case may be, UNIQUE is there to help us ensure this type of data integrity or business requirement. What if the target table already exists and you determine you need to add a UNIQUE constraint to an existing column? In this post, I will cover 2 ways you can implement a UNIQUE constraint on existing columns using the phpMyAdmin web interface…

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The Challenge Often with sensitive information, you need to have an audit log. Not just that a table had a select run, but that specific cells within the table were accessed.  Frequently data such as this will contain a classification level as part of the row, defining policies for how it is handled, audited, etc.… Facebook Twitter LinkedIn