The latest from the MySQL community

You've probably all experienced it; another outage and the database is the root cause.  Why are databases such a frequent cause of problems in most tech stacks? Why can't we seem to solve these problems industry-wide?  Are database engineers and database admins just bad at their jobs?

Over my career as a database reliability engineer, I've come to a conclusion which I don't see repeated often:

All practical implementations have to balance the opposing concerns of correctness vs. performance & availability (this is kind of similar to CAP theorem , but not exactly the same).   Perfect correctness with no data loss across geographic distances would result in a database which is too slow or too costly to be useful for most applications. And these constraints cannot be overcome because it's the physical bounds of reality which imposes …

“Through transparent roadmaps, community-driven collaboration, contributor programs, and the MySQL Governance model, we aim to create an environment where innovation can accelerate while preserving the reliability, compatibility, security, and operational excellence that organizations around the world depend on.”

Q1. Oracle has announced a “new era” of MySQL community engagement at MySQL’s 30th anniversary. Can you walk us through what specifically prompted this strategic shift, and what concrete changes can the community expect to see in how Oracle approaches MySQL development and governance?

HVC: Throughout 2025 we celebrated 30 years of MySQL and reflected on the past and present, but more importantly, the future. The MySQL Community team sought feedback from around the globe on how to lead the next generation of MySQL innovation and open source collaboration. We came to Jason …

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
…

Learn how Multi-Valued Indexing in MySQL 8.0 can enhance query performance by efficiently indexing and querying JSON arrays. Discover the benefits, implementation steps, and considerations for optimizing your MySQL database.

1. Multi-Valued Indexing in MySQL 8.0
2. Understanding Multi-Valued Indexes and their benefits
3. Creating Multi-Valued Indexes in MySQL …

Table of contents:

1. Introduction
2. Common reasons for switching the primary node
3. Primary Promotion and its importance
4. Methods for switching the primary node
5. …

Given the recent surge of interest in ChatGPT and the AI capabilities it offers, I decided to conduct an interview with it to assess its suitability for a MySQL Consultant…

The post MySQL Interview – ChatGPT is not your DBA first appeared on Change Is Inevitable.

AlmaLinux doesn’t natively support MySQL Workbench but these notes will help you install it. The great news is that MySQL Workbench works perfectly once you’ve installed all the dependent libraries. It’ll look like the following:

Disclaimer of sorts:

AlmaLinux is an open-source, community-driven project that intends to fill the gap left by the demise of the CentOS stable release. AlmaLinux is a 1:1 binary compatible fork of RHEL® 9 and it is built by the AlmaLinux OS Foundation as a standalone, completely free OS. The AlmaLinux OS Foundation will support future RHEL® releases by updating AlmaLinux. Ongoing development efforts are governed by the members of the community.

You can download MySQL Workbench from the following website:

https://dev.mysql.com/downloads/workbench

When you open this page, select the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 / Oracle Linux 9 (x86, 64-bit), RPM Package from the dropdown …

A quick primer on Perl programs connecting to the MySQL database. It’s another set of coding examples for the AlmaLinux instance that I’m building for students. This one demonstrates basic Perl programs, connecting to MySQL, returning data sets by reference and position, dynamic queries, and input parameters to dynamic queries.

1. Naturally, a hello.pl is a great place to start:

   #!/usr/bin/perl
   
   # Hello World program.
   print "Hello World!\n";
   

   After setting the permissions to -rwxr-xr-x. with this command:

   chmod 755 hello.pl
   

   You call it like this from the Command-Line Interface (CLI):

   ./hello.pl
   

   It prints:

   Hello World!
   

2. Next, a connect.pl program lets us test the Perl::DBI connection to the MySQL database.

   #!/usr/bin/perl
   
   # Import libraries.
   use strict;
   use warnings;
   use v5.10;     # for …

No, I don’t think so. But it is does change our profession and have important implications for software engineers using (not managing) MySQL.

No, I don’t think so. But it is does change our profession and have important implications for software engineers using (not managing) MySQL.