Is it cheating? Is using MySQL without Structured Query Language (SQL) or putting all your data into one column proper? Impossible a year ago and probably thought as a poor/crazy practice until recently, this is a new type of MySQL usage. NoSQL has had a big impact in the SQL world with several relational products from vendors like MySQL, Microsoft, Postgresql and others offering NoSQL interfaces and JSON data types to their databases.

Several old timers have come to me asking if putting lots of data in a JSON column is cheating? After all data normalization is part of relational databases and the way to efficiency and speed is well organized data. This higgledy–piggledy fashion of putting an entire document in a column without breaking it down to its component sections does violate the first rule of data normalization. And that has …

[this is a repost of my http://shardquery.com blog post, because it did not syndicate to planet.mysql.com]

As work on WarpSQL (Shard-Query 3) progresses, it has outgrown MySQL proxy.  MySQL proxy is a very useful tool, but it requires LUA scripting, and it is an external daemon that needs to be maintained.  The MySQL proxy module for Shard-Query works well, but to make WarpSQL into a real distributed transaction coordinator, moving the proxy logic inside of the server makes more sense.

The main benefit of MySQL proxy is that it allows a script to "inject" queries between the client and server, intercepting the results and possibly sending back new results to the client.  I would like similar functionality, but inside of the server.

For example, I would like to implement new SHOW commands, and these commands do not need to be …

[this is a repost of my http://shardquery.com blog post, because it did not syndicate to planet.mysql.com]

As work on WarpSQL (Shard-Query 3) progresses, it has outgrown MySQL proxy.  MySQL proxy is a very useful tool, but it requires LUA scripting, and it is an external daemon that needs to be maintained.  The MySQL proxy module for Shard-Query works well, but to make WarpSQL into a real distributed transaction coordinator, moving the proxy logic inside of the server makes more sense.

The main benefit of MySQL proxy is that it allows a script to "inject" queries between the client and server, intercepting the results and possibly sending back new results to the client.  I would like similar functionality, but inside of the server.

For example, I would like to implement new SHOW commands, and these commands do not need to be …

As work on WarpSQL (Shard-Query 3) progresses, it has outgrown MySQL proxy.  MySQL proxy is a very useful tool, but it requires LUA scripting, and it is an external daemon that needs to be maintained.  The MySQL proxy module for Shard-Query works well, but to make WarpSQL into a real distributed transaction coordinator, moving the proxy logic inside of the server makes more sense.

The main benefit of MySQL proxy is that it allows a script to “inject” queries between the client and server, intercepting the results and possibly sending back new results to the client.  I would like similar functionality, but inside of the server.

For example, I would like to implement new SHOW commands, and these commands do not need to be implemented as actual MySQL SHOW commands under the covers.

For example, for this blog post I made a new example command called “SHOW PASSWORD”

MySQL 5.7 introduced many new facets to password security. The first thing most notice is that you are assigned a random root password at installation time. You then have to search the log file for this random password, use it to login, and then change it. For the examples on the post I am using a fresh install of 5.7.13 on Oracle Linux 7.1 and was provided with the easy to remember password of nLvQRk7wq-NY which to me looked like I forgot to hit escape when trying to get out of vim. A quick ALTER USER to change the password and you are on your way. Defaults Password Lifetime and Complexity5.7.13 now has the default password lifetime set to 0 or 'never expire'. My fresh install shows that the value of mysql.user.password_lifetime is set to NULL which …

It's usually a good practice to have two columns called date_created and date_updated in every table. One can always use it in application and it helps in debugging too as to when a record was created and last updated in various circumstances and contexts.




This responsibility can be given to MySQL to automatically assign current time values to these columns.

In MySQL 5.6 onwards, this can be done by setting the data type of the columns to be either date time or timestamp and creating date_created column with NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP  schema and date_updated column with NOT NULL DEFAULT …

The MySQL Utilities Team is pleased to announce a new beta release of MySQL Utilities. This release includes a number of improvements for usability, stability, and a few enhancements. A complete list of all improvements can be found in our release notes.

New Enhancements!
This release represents a stable release of the product. Along with several defect patches, we also include the following enhancements.

Improved support for MySQL 5.7
Improved functionality of --exclude option with SQL wildcards
Improved packaging in RPM and Windows distributions
Improved accuracy of calculated disk usage for mysqldiskusage
...and a host of minor improvements for quality and robustness


How Can I Download MySQL Utilities?
You can download MySQL Utilities 1.6.3 Beta from the …

Last time this blog covered digging into a JSON document in a MySQL 5.7 table. The goal was to pull certain records matching a particular criteria. Both Peter Zaitsev and Morgan Tocker get my thanks for their kind comments. My example was a little contrived in that an application would be used to fine tune seeking for a particular key value pair. I was trying to pull single records which is kind of silly when it is much easier to use PHP to parse the data. What follows below is a sample PHP script to grab out the matching records and then feed the results, the JSON document, into an array.

#!/usr/bin/php
<?php
$mysqli = new mysqli("localhost", "root", "hidave", "test");

/* check connection */
if (mysqli_connect_errno()) {
    printf("Connect failed: %s\n", …

The newest release of the MySQL Connector/Arduino library release-1.1 alpha is available for download. This new version represents a major step forward for the library in ease of use. Here are just a few of the important changes in this release.

• Added to Library Manager : yes, you can download and install the library from the Arduino IDE now. Just open the Library Manager and search for "MySQL".
• More Example Sketches : there are many more example sketches of how to use the new library from basic connections to complex queries and more! 
• Redesigned Classes : the library has been redesigned with new classes making it much easier to use a wider variety of shields and modules. Now, you pass in the Client class for your shield and so long as it adheres to the Ethernet.Client primitive, you can use any library to initiate …

Indexes are separate data structures that provide alternate pathways to finding data. They can and do generally speed up the processing of queries and other DML commands, like the INSERT, UPDATE, REPLACE INTO, and DELETE statements. Indexes are also called fast access paths.

In the scope of the InnoDB Database Engine, the MySQL database maintains the integrity of indexes after you create them. The upside of indexes is that they can improve SQL statement performance. The downside is that they impose overhead on every INSERT, UPDATE, REPLACE INTO, and DELETE statement, because the database maintains them by inserting, updating, or deleting items for each related change in the tables that the indexes support.

Indexes have two key properties—usability and visibility. Indexes are both usable and visible by default. That means they …