MySQL Analysis: With an AI-Powered CLI Tool

As DBAs with MySQL we often live on a Linux terminal window. We also enjoy free options when available. This post shows an approach that allows us to stay on our terminal window and still use an AI-powered tool. You can update to use other direct AI providers but I set this example up to use aimlapi.com as it brings multiple AI models to your terminal for free with limited use or very low cost for more testing.

Note: I'm not a paid spokesperson for AIMLAPI or anything - this is just an easy example to highlight the idea.

The Problem

You're looking at a legacy database with hundreds of tables, each with complex relationships and questionable design decisions made years ago. The usual process involves:

• Manual schema inspection
• Cross-referencing documentation (if it exists)
• Running multiple EXPLAIN queries
…

Being a terminal fan myself, I usually find myself running queries in the mysql client instead of a UI interface as it is much faster. You get to see the results instantaneously.

One thing which is pretty tedious is editing a big query again after once running it as the whole multi-line formatted query now appears on a single line, thus reducing its readability.

But no problems, you can edit your query from a file and run the file from your mysql client terminal as many times as you want with as many edits.

To do so, follow the below steps:

1. Open your terminal and cd into the folder you want to store our sample mysql file. Then save your query in a sample file called my_query.sql

$ cd /path/to/folder
$ vim my_query.sql

Save a sample query like:

SELECT * FROM employees
WHERE type LIKE …

If you use a Mac, and you are dealing with many similar tasks at once, like examining many database servers in different terminals, you may like this one.
I have been using iTerm 2 for a while, and my handling of parallel tasks has improved a lot. (No, I am not talking about Parallel replication, although I have applied this trick while testing that technology as well.)
iTerm2 has some cool features, and probably the most striking one is split panes. That alone would be a good reason for giving iTerm2 a try. But the one that I use the most, often in combination with Split Panes, is called Send Input to all tabs.
Here is how it works.
Let's say I need to …