Where I work, there is an ongoing discussion about test data generation. At the moment we do not replace or change any production data for use in the test environments, and we don’t generate test data.

That is safe and legal, because production data is tokenized. That is, PII and PCI data is being replaced by placeholder tokens which can be used by applications to access the actual protected data through specially protected access services. Only a very limited circle of people is dealing with data in behind the protected services.

Using production data in test databases is also fast, because we copy data in parallel, at line speed, or we make redirect-on-write (“copy-on-write” in the age of SSD) writeable snapshots available.

Assume for a moment we want to change that and

• mask data from production when we copy it to test databases
• reduce the amount of data used in test databases, while …

The microservice architecture is not a new pattern but has become very popular lately for mainly two reasons: cloud computing and containers. That combo helped increase adoption by tackling the two main concerns on every infrastructure: Cost reduction and infrastructure management.

However, all that beauty hides a dark truth:

The hardest part of microservices is the data layer

And that is especially true when it comes to classic relational databases like MySQL. Let’s figure out why that is.

MySQL and the microservice

Following the same two pillars of microservices (cloud computing and containers), what can one do with that in the MySQL space? What do cloud computing and containers bring to the table?

Cloud computing

The magic of the cloud is that it allows you to be cost savvy by letting you easily SCALE UP/SCALE DOWN the size of your instances. No more wasted money on …

Once again, OpenLampTech has another full issue for all of your MySQL, PHP, and LAMP stack content. The publication continues to grow. Thank you all for reading.

The Newsletter for PHP and MySQL Developers

Receive a copy of my ebook, “10 MySQL Tips For Everyone”, absolutely free when you subscribe to the OpenLampTech newsletter.

In OpenLampTech issue #45, enjoy articles covering:

• Symfony’s Twig
• MySQL PIVOT functionality
• Building a niche website with WordPress
• 10 popular Linux distros
• And much much more.

Want to know how you can support OpenLampTech?

Head over to the …

In the MySQL world, I am surrounded by some of the best database consultant, it brings them immense joy about having a “Friday”, so much so that they cannot believe…

The post Providing Friday Proofs to MySQL Consultants | Scripts Functions Routines first appeared on Change Is Inevitable.

Overview JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) is a light-weight text-based file format similar to YAML or XML which simplifies data exchange. It was invented by Douglas Crockford in the early 2000s and became increasingly popular with the rise of document-based (also called NoSQL) databases. JSON supports strings, numbers, booleans, objects, and arrays as well as null values. A simple JSON example containing key-value pairs, an object "bandMembers" and an array "songs" would look like this:{ "artist": "Starlord Band", "bandMembers": { "vocals": "Steve Szczepkowski", "guitar": "Yohann Boudreault", "bass": "Yannick T.", "drums": "Vince T." }, "bandMembersCount": 4, "album": "Space Rider", "releaseDate": "2021-10-25", "songs": [ "Zero to Hero", "Space Riders with No Names", "Ghost", "Bit of Good (Bit of Bad)", "Watch me shine", "We’re Here", "The Darkness inside", "No Guts No Glory", "All for One", "Solar Skies" ], "songsCount": 10 }

MySQL has …

Learn what the MySQL JSON data type is when to use MySQL JSON and some caveats to using JSON documents in relational databases.

When you develop an application you expect success, and often success comes with growth problems.  These problems especially show themselves in the area of data storage, where being stateful is not as easy to scale as the stateless parts of the application.

There are several stages of approaching database scalability:

1. Configuration and query optimization. This step can help a lot, and I would recommend a recent book by Daniel Nichter “Efficient MySQL Performance: Best Practices and Techniques”, which goes into this topic.
2. If #1 is done and you continue to push the limits of your database, the next step is to improve the hardware: adding extra memory, improving storage throughput (regular SSD, NVMe storage layer, etc.), or increasing the size of the cloud instances (this is what I call “optimization by credit card”). This typically should help, but only to a certain limit. And there is only so much …

With Terraform OCI provider 4.90.0 (released August 24th, 2022), we have added the possibility to specify the value of editable configuration variables directly from Terraform.

These variables must be defined in a resource of type oci_mysql_mysql_configuration like this:

resource "oci_mysql_mysql_configuration" "mds_mysql_configuration" {
        #Required
        compartment_id = var.compartment_ocid
    shape_name   = var.mysql_shape

         …

Mydumper supports streaming of backups right from version 0.11.3 and the latest version Mydumper 0.12.3 it enabled its support for compressed streaming backup. This was the most awaited feature added to Mydumper, making it a more powerful tool for data migration to RDS or Cloud.

If you are hearing mydumper for the first time, then let’s have a quick catch-up on what Mydumper is and what it does exactly.

Mydumper is a multithread logical backup and restores tool for MySQL and its forks. To know more you can refer to our previous blogs/presentations below.

• https://mydbops.wordpress.com/2016/01/31/faster-logical-backup-with-mydumper/
• …

Anyone operating a blog, newsletter, or other creative side hustle knows there are a lot of moving pieces involved behind the scenes. Keeping the cadence going not only requires commitment and skills, but also various tools and software…

The Newsletter for PHP and MySQL Developers

Receive a copy of my ebook, “10 MySQL Tips For Everyone”, absolutely free when you subscribe to the OpenLampTech newsletter.

At the time of writing, the OpenLampTech developer newsletter is entering its 10th straight month of publishing so I thought it was time to share a ‘Tools of the Trade – …