In this post, I’ll cover examples of the MySQL TRIM() function. TRIM() removes specific characters – or spaces – from a given string, at either: the beginning, ending, or potentially in both locations depending on several factors. With an optional keyword argument that controls which character(s) – if any – are removed, TRIM() can be tricky so let’s gain understanding with several easy-to-digest examples…

Photo by Peter Beukema on Unsplash

OS, Software, and DB used:

• OpenSuse Leap 15.1
• MySQL 8.0.20

Self-Promotion:

If you enjoy …

If you write MySQL queries, at some point you are going to have to provide query results in a specific order. To impose any ordering in MySQL (this applies to SQL overall and is not directed only at MySQL), you have to use the ORDER BY clause. Without it, there is no guaranteed order. The database is free to send back query results in any order. As I learn PHP, I make it a point to explore both the MySQL side, along with the PHP side in regards to similar type tasks and the efficiency of each. So far in my PHP journey, I have found that arrays are used quite extensively. In this post, I’ll cover array_multisort() – one of many in-built PHP functions – used for sorting arrays. In the context of the example data for this post, the arrays are populated by an unordered MySQL query. Let’s see one example of how you can establish a sorting order in a PHP …

Would you play a multiplayer game if you discovered other people are cheating? According to a survey by Irdeto, 60% of online games were negatively impacted by cheaters, and 77% of players said they would stop playing a multiplayer game if they think opponents are cheating. Player churn grows as cheating grows.

Stopping this is therefore essential if you want to build and develop your community, which is essential to success for today’s gaming companies. This session at Percona Live ONLINE was presented by Yahav Biran, specialist solutions architect, gaming technologies at Amazon Web Services, and Yoav Eilat, Senior Product Manager at Amazon Web Services, presented a talk and demonstration about anti-cheating tools in gaming based on using automation and machine learning (ML).

Yoav notes that while people might think of ML in terms of text or images, but: …

Percona engineers often need to analyze and review complex SQL database queries. Good formatting can make these SQL queries much easier to understand and work with. Without clear formatting, queries can become confusing and hard to debug.

Online query formatting services provide one set of solutions. Examples are Code Beautify, FreeFormatter, and sqlformat.org. However, many users are not comfortable sharing their queries with third-party services, especially if your SQL code contains confidential information.

This article examines alternatives to online tools for SQL query formatting tools that have been successfully used by Percona engineers. These solutions come in different types:

1. Plug-ins to your code editor or …

Working on a weekend project,  I became familiar with the SQL keyword “LATERAL”, which I had not used before because it was only introduced recently in MySQL 8.0.14,  so I wanted to share how it can be used.

Some references on this topic:

Lateral Derived Tables

LATERAL Derived Tables in MySQL 8.0

The keyword “LATERAL” comes into play when you work with derived tables. The derived tables have been available in MySQL for a long time, and schematically they look like this:

SELECT t1.foo, t2.bar FROM t1, (SELECT bar FROM table2 WHERE <condition> ) t2 WHERE t1.id=t2.id;

The table “

(SELECT bar FROM table1 …

I will try to make it short and clear: if you are writing SQL queries with “NOT IN” like
SELECT … WHERE x NOT IN (SELECT y FROM …)
you have to be sure to first understand what happens when “x” or “y” are NULL: it might not be what you want!…

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Introduction In this article, we are going to see how the SQL EXISTS operator works and when you should use it. Although the EXISTS operator has been available since SQL:86, the very first edition of the SQL Standard, I found that there are still many application developers who don’t realize how powerful SQL subquery expressions really are when it comes to filtering a given table based on a condition evaluated on a different table. Database table model Let’s assume we have the following two tables in our database, that form a one-to-many... Read More

The post SQL EXISTS and NOT EXISTS appeared first on Vlad Mihalcea.

In MySQL 8.0.1, we introduced support for recursive common table expressions (CTE). There are quite a few blog entries showcasing the feature, starting from this one, and there is also a complete documentation. Today, I would like to present a solution to a problem which nearly everybody meets when writing queries with recursive CTE’s: when infinite recursion happens, how to debug ?…

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In MySQL 8.0.17, we made an observation in the well-known TPC-H benchmark for one particular query. The query was executing 20% faster than in MySQL 8.0.16. This improvement is because of the “antijoin” optimization which I implemented. Here is its short mention in the release notes:

“The optimizer now transforms a WHERE condition having NOT IN (subquery), NOT EXISTS (subquery), IN (subquery) IS NOT TRUE, or EXISTS (subquery) IS NOT TRUE internally into an antijoin, thus removing the subquery.”…

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Introduction In this article, we are going to see how a CROSS JOIN works, and we will also make use of this SQL join type to build a poker card game. Database table model For our poker card game application, we have created the ranks and suits database tables: The ranks table defines the ranking of cards, as well as the name and symbol used for each card rank: The suits table describes the four possible categories used by the French playing cards: Cartesian product In the set theory, the Cartesian product... Read More

The post A beginner’s guide to SQL CROSS JOIN appeared first on Vlad Mihalcea.