Dear MySQL users,

I’m glad to announce that MySQL X DevAPI extension for PHP 8.0.3 has been recently released!

If for some reason you don’t know what this is all about, then in short the MySQL X DevAPI for PHP add support for the new X DevAPI in PHP, and it’s released as an extension to the language. The X DevAPI enables application developers to write code that combines the strengths of the relational and document models –MySQL as a Document Store– using a modern NoSQL-like syntax that does not assume previous experience writing traditional SQL.

For general documentation about how to get started using MySQL as a document store, see “Using MySQL as a Document Store”.

Download the extension.

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These are the slides for my MySQL 8.0 Preview: What is coming? At PHPWorld 2017.

Abstract:

Yes, you read it correctly, we are jumping from 5.7 to 8.0 (that sounds familiar, doesn’t it?). The new version doesn’t only change the number but also changes how you write SQL. Recursive queries will allow you to generate series and work with hierarchical data. New JSON functions and performance improvements were also added to 8.0 to help you work on non-relational data. Expect to see what is new and improved in this talk to power up your application even more.

Please share your feedback at Joind.in: https://joind.in/talk/0e88f

I would like to thank Digital Ocean for enabling my research for this talk …

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. …

Most of the PHP I write runs on Bluemix – it’s IBM self-service cloud, and since I work there, they pay for my accounts :) There are a bunch of databases you can use there, mostly open source offerings, and of course with PHP I like to use MySQL. Someone asked me for my connection code since it’s a bit tricky to grab the credentials that you need, so here it is. Bluemix Environment Variables

In Bluemix, you can simply create a MySQL database (look for “compose-for-mysql” in the catalog), create a set of credentials, and then bind it to your app. I should blog a few more of my PHP-on-Bluemix tricks but you can run a selection of PHP versions and it’s also possible to add extensions that you need, I have found it does have what I need once I figure out how to configure it!

Once the database is bound to the application, then your PHP code running on Bluemix will have an environment variable called …

The ConFoo Team is pleased to announce the opening of its call for paper for its Montreal event.

To celebrate its 15th anniversary, CooFoo will be focusing its 2018 Montreal edition on “Experiment & Learn”. Indeed, as Montreal is becoming one of the world emerging AI advanced research centers, disrupting the global innovation scene, we are particularly interested in gathering and exchanging with developers in the AI community.

If you live in Montreal you can be proud ambassadors of this innovative mindset that pervades the developers’ ecosystem. If you come from elsewhere you obviously have a passion for data learning, model development, and the various industries to apply your knowledge (healthcare, finance, automotive…)

Don’t miss this unique opportunity to share your experience with passionate developers. Whether in artificial intelligence or other …

In the quest to secure MySQL as well as ease the number of complicated passwords to remember, many organizations are looking into external authentication, especially using LDAP. For free and open source, Percona’s PAM authentication plugin is the standard option.

tl;dr is I go through how to compile php-cli for use with auth_pam plugin.

Background
There are two plugins that can be used. From the documentation, the two plugins are:

• Full PAM plugin called auth_pam. This plugin uses dialog.so. It fully supports the PAM protocol with arbitrary communication between client and server.
• Oracle-compatible PAM called auth_pam_compat. …

JSON in Flat File to MySQL DatabaseSo how do you load that JSON data file into MySQL. Recently I had this question presented to me and I thought I would share a handy script I use to do such work. For this example I will use the US Zip (postal) codes from JSONAR. Download and unzip the file. The data file is named zips.json and it can not be bread directly into MySQL using the SOURCE command. It needs to have the information wrapped in a more palatable fashion.

head zips.json 
{ "city" : "AGAWAM", "loc" : [ -72.622739, 42.070206 ], "pop" : 15338, "state" : "MA", "_id" : "01001" }
{ "city" : "CUSHMAN", "loc" : [ -72.51564999999999, 42.377017 ], "pop" : 36963, "state" : "MA", "_id" : "01002" }
{ "city" : "BARRE", "loc" : [ -72.10835400000001, 42.409698 ], "pop" : 4546, "state" : "MA", "_id" : "01005" }
{ "city" : "BELCHERTOWN", "loc" : [ -72.41095300000001, …

Embedding Structured Query Language (SQL) within PHP, or other programming languages, has been problematic for some. Mixing two programming languages together is just plainly not aesthetically pleasing. Especially when you have a declarative language (SQL) mixed with a procedural-object oriented language. But now, with the MySQL XDevAPI PECL extension, PHP developers can now stop mixing the two languages together together. MySQL Document StoreThe MySQL Document Store eliminates the heavy burden for SQL skills. It is designed to be a high speed, schema-less data store and is based on the MySQL JSON data type. This gives you roughly a gigabyte of store in a document format to do with as needed. So you do not need to architect you data before hand when you have no idea how it will evolve. No need to normalize your data. Now behind the scenes …

The VideoThe find() function for the MySQL Document Store is a very powerful tool and I have just finished a handy introductory video. By the way -- please let me have feed back on the pace, the background music, the CGI special effects (kidding!), and the amount of the content. The ScriptFor those who want to follow along with the videos, the core examples are below. The first step is to connect to a MySQL server to talk to the world_x schema (Instructions on loading that schema at the first link above).

\connect root@localhost/world_x

db is an object to points to the world_x schema. To find the records in the countryinfo collection, use db.countryinfo.find(). But that returns 237 JSON documents, too many! So lets cut it down to …

I am starting a series of videos on the MySQL Document Store. The Document Store allows those who do not know Structured Query Language (SQL) to use a database without having to know the basics of relational databases, set theory, or data normalization. The goal is to have sort 2-3 minute episodes on the various facets of the Document Store including the basics, using various programming languages (Node.JS, PHP, Python), and materializing free form schemaless, NoSQL data into columns for use with SQL.

The first Episode, Introduction, can be found here.

Please provide feedback and let me know if there are subjects you would want covered in the near future.