Help!

I am preparing a presentation for the Longhorn PHP conference titled PHP & MySQL -- How do PDO, MySQLi, and X DevAPI do what they do.  This will be a comparison of using PHP with different MySQL Connectors.  As far as I can tell there are no three way comparisons of mysqli, PDO, and the X DevAPI PECL extension.  And much of the PDO versus myqli stuff looks to me like it has not aged well. 

I have good material in the raw presentation about overall features, parameters for prepared queries. And a good section on the how's and whys on prepared queries.  

But what else would you like to see in such a presentation?  I have read some postings on the web about turning off buffering (fairly simple to do).  But what else are would you like to see compared?

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There was an excellent question from Francis on my MySQL X DevAPI tutorial on how to work with NULL values:

Is it possible to store an attribute with the null value, and how to find it (xxx is null ?

It may sound like a trivial question, but the answer is not all that simple, so instead of just replying directly to the comment, I think it is worth covering the subject of NULL values in the X DevAPI in a separate post.

The Short Story

In short there are two ways to work with “not a value” in the X DevAPI. One way is to not set a value for those fields in which case you can …

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The X DevAPI allows you to work with JSON documents and SQL tables at the same time. Furthermore, the CRUD style API is more intuitive than SQL statements for some programmers. Either way, the X DevAPI allows you to mix JSON documents, SQL tables, CRUD methods, and SQL statements to give you the best of all worlds. In MySQL Connector/Python, the X DevAPI is implemented in the mysqlx module.

This blog will look at how MySQL Connector/Python handles expressions, and how you in version 8.0.14 and later need to use the mysqlx.expr() method to explicitly define expressions.

Information

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The MySQL X DevAPI is the new API that provides a uniform API across the supported programming languages. It has from the beginning supported that you can specify a default schema, when you connect. Originally it was not used for SQL statements. Starting with MySQL 8.0.14 the feature has been extended, so SQL statements take the default schema into consideration as well. This blog will explore how this works using MySQL Connector/Python. If you use a different programming language, the change will work in a similar way.

In order to explore the feature, a sample program is needed. A simple program that prints the MySQL Connector/Python version, queries the city table in the default schema, and either …

Since 5.7.12 MySQL includes what is called the X plugin, but also it includes X protocol and X DevApi. But what is all this and how does it work? Let me share a personal short story on how I found myself investigating this feature. In a previous post I wrote about the MySQL Router tool, and our colleague Mr. Lefred pointed out that I was wrong about X protocol, because I mentioned it was created to be used with JSON docs. Given this input, I wanted to investigate in a little bit more depth about what all this “X” means and how it can be used in our day to day operations.

First problem I found is that the documentation is pretty extensive in the how’s but it was really hard to find the what’s. This is a bit strange, because for people trying to research about …

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Maybe the biggest new feature in MySQL 8 is the new transaction data dictionary that improves the consistency of schema objects among other things. To further protect the data in the data dictionary, the data dictionary tables are hidden and their content only exposed through the Information Schema. (One exception is when you use the debug binary, then it is possible to get direct access to the data dictionary tables. This is not recommended at all on production systems!)

A side effect of the data dictionary tables being hidden is that those that have had a habit of manipulating the tables directly in MySQL 5.7 and earlier (I will not recommend doing that) will no longer be able to do so. Examples of manipulating the tables include …

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If you have an application that need to use multiple connections to the MySQL database for short periods of times, it can be a good to use a connection pool to avoid creating a new connection and going through the whole authentication process every time a connection is needed. For the Python Database API (PEP249), MySQL Connector/Python has had support for connection pools for a long time. With the release of MySQL 8.0.13, the new X DevAPI also has support for connection pools.

This blog will first cover the background of the X DevAPI connection pool feature in MySQL Connector/Python. Then …

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First of all, thanks to everyone who attended my sessions at the recent Oracle OpenWorld and Code One in San Francisco. It was a great privilege to be allowed to make a number of presentations.

All of the workbooks and scripts from the hands-on labs (HOL) and the slides from the talks have been made available at OpenWorld’s and Code One’s session catalogues. You can download the files by using the OpenWorld catalog searching for my name or the session number (see below). Click on the download icon for each of the presentations you are interested in.

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The MySQL Document Store became general available (GA) with MySQL 8. One of the nice features of the MySQL Document Store is the X DevAPI that allows you to query the data from a multitude of programming languages using the same API (but while retaining the conventions of the language). The programming languages with support for the X DevAPI includes JavaScript (Node.js), PHP, Java, DotNet, and C++.

I will be using MySQL Connector/Python 8.0.12 for the example in this blog. The example is executed on Microsoft Windows with Python 3.6 installed, but it has also been tested on Oracle Linux 7 with Python 2.7. I do assume that MySQL Connector/Python has been installed. If that is not the case, you can read how to do it in the …

Introduction

What is the X-DevApi? From insidemysql.com there is a definition of the X-DevAPI and its features in the following paragraphs:

The X DevAPI is the common client-side API used by all connectors to abstract the details of the X Protocol. It specifies the common set of CRUD-style functions/methods used by all the official connectors to work with both document store collections and relational tables, a common expression language to establish query properties such as criteria, projections, aliases, and a standard set of additional database management features for handling things like transactions, indexes, etc.

The fact that most of these features share the same format and API between connectors, makes the X DevAPI a perfect fit for modern polyglot development environments such as microservices, and the fact that they are based on a …