Introduction In this article, we are going to see how Index Selectivity works in relational database systems and why the database Optimizer might choose to avoid using an index if the number of matching records is large. Index selectivity is inversely proportional to the number of index entries matched by a given value. So, a unique index has the highest selectivity because only a single entry can be matched by any given value. On the other hand, if column values are skewed, then a column value matching a large number of table... Read More

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I’ve had this list on a post-it note on my monitor for all of 2022. I figured it was time to write it down, and reuse the space.

In summary, AWS suffers from the same problem that almost every other product does. It sacrifices improved security for backward compatibility of functionality. IMO this is not in the best practices of a data ecosystem that is under constant attack.

• Storage should be encrypted by default. When you launch an RDS cluster its storage is not encrypted. This goes against their own AWS Well-Architected Framework Section 2 – Security.
• Plain text passwords. To launch a cluster you must specify a password in plain text on the command line, again not security best practice. At least change this to using a known secret from AWS secrets manager.
• TLS for administrative accounts should be the only option. The root user should only be REQUIRE SSL (MySQL syntax).
• Expanding on …

Introduction Welcome to a new issue of the High-Performance Java Persistence Newsletter in which we share articles, videos, workshops, and StackOverflow answers that are very relevant to any developer who interacts with a database system using Java. Articles From version 2.12, Percona PMM uses Victoria Metrics instead of Prometheus. Victoria Metrics provides better disk I/0 utilization and less memory usage. For more details about this change and its benefits, check out this article. By default, the MySQL JDBC Driver only emulates prepared statements. If you wonder whether server-side prepared statements perform better... Read More

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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: …

Introduction Welcome to a new issue of the Java and Database newsletter in which we share articles, announcements, and StackOverflow answers that are very relevant to any developer who interacts with a database system from Java. Articles Since version 13, Java now supports multiline string literals via the Text Blocks feature. To see how much more readable are SQL or JPQL queries, JSON, HTML, and XML string literals when using Text Blocks, then you should definitely read this article, When writing SQL queries with the NOT IN query expression, you need to... Read More

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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

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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

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Introduction In this article, we are going to see how a deadlock can occur in a relational database system, and how Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, or MySQL recover from a deadlock situation. Database locking Relational database systems use various locks to guarantee transaction ACID properties. For instance, no matter what relational database system you are using, locks will always be acquired when modifying (e.g., UPDATE or DELETE) a certain table record. Without locking a row that was modified by a currently running transaction, Atomicity would be compromised. Using locking for controlling access... Read More

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Introduction Ever wanted to connect to a relational database using Java and didn’t know which JDBC Driver Maven dependency to use? If so, this article is surely going to help you from now on. Oracle Since September 2019, the Oracle JDBC Driver is available on Maven Central. For JDK 10 and 11, use the following Maven dependency: For JDK 8, use the ojdbc8 artifact instead: For more details about the proper version to use, check out the following Maven Central link. MySQL The MySQL Driver is available on Maven Central, so just... Read More

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In MySQL and Oracle, you set a session variable quite differently. That means you should expect there differences between setting a session variable in Postgres. This blog post lets you see how to set them in all three databases. I’m always curious what people think but I’m willing to bet that MySQL is the simplest approach. Postgres is a bit more complex because you must use a function call, but Oracle is the most complex.

The difference between MySQL and Postgres is an “@” symbol versus a current_setting() function call. Oracle is more complex because it involves the mechanics in Oracle’s sqlplus shell, SQL dialect, and PL/SQL language (required to assign a value to a variable).

MySQL

MySQL lets you declare a session variable in one step and use it one way in a SQL statement or stored procedure.

1. You set a session variable on a single line with the following …