MySQL

Should you use sql specific statements?

It seems there are two camps when it comes to SQL and how to do database optimizations - the “generic camp” and “the specialist camp”. While I don’t consider myself an extremist, I am absolutely in the specialist camp and this little post is an explanation of why.

SQL is a generic database langauge . There are a few different standards in use (the language has progressed over time), but the core of the SQL language is pretty much the standard in most databases. It’s probably also standard - in any database - that the SQL standard has been extended with database-specific extensions which provides optimizations, functions or other options not available in the SQL standard.

Mysql: Change account password

Through the mysql client:

update mysql.user set password=password('NEW_PASSWORD') where user='USERNAME' and host='HOSTNAME';
flush privileges;

Through the command line:

mysqladmin -u USERNAME -p CURRENT_PWD password NEW_PWD

Replace USERNAME, CURRENT_PWD and NEW_PWD with appropriate values.

Mysql: Delete orphan records

Finding records that do not match between two tables.

          CREATE TABLE bookreport (
            b\_id int(11) NOT NULL auto\_increment,
            s\_id int(11) NOT NULL,
            report varchar(50),
            PRIMARY KEY  (b\_id)

          );

          CREATE TABLE student (
            s\_id int(11) NOT NULL auto\_increment,
            name varchar(15),
            PRIMARY KEY  (s\_id)
          );

          insert into student (name) values ('bob');
          insert into bookreport (s\_id,report)
            values ( last\_insert\_id(),'A Death in the Family');

          insert into student (name) values ('sue');
          insert into bookreport (s\_id,report)
            values ( last\_insert\_id(),'Go Tell It On the Mountain');

          insert into student (name) values ('doug');
          insert into bookreport (s\_id,report)
            values ( last\_insert\_id(),'The Red Badge of Courage');

          insert into student (name) values ('tom');
 To find the sudents where are missing reports:
          select s.name from student s
            left outer join bookreport b on s.s_id = b.s_id
          where b.s_id is null;

              +------+
              | name |
              +------+
              | tom  |
              +------+
              1 row in set (0.00 sec)
 Ok, next suppose there is an orphan record in
 in bookreport. First delete a matching record
 in student:
       delete from student where s_id in (select max(s_id) from bookreport);
 Now, how to find which one is orphaned:

       select * from bookreport b left outer join
       student s on b.s_id=s.s_id where s.s_id is null;

     +------+------+--------------------------+------+------+
     | b_id | s_id | report                   | s_id | name |
     +------+------+--------------------------+------+------+
     |    4 |    4 | The Red Badge of Courage | NULL | NULL |
     +------+------+--------------------------+------+------+
     1 row in set (0.00 sec)
To clean things up (Note in 4.1 you can’t do subquery on same table in a delete so it has to be done in 2 steps):

Mysql: Dump data in XML or HTML

Assume you have the table “exams” in the database “test”.Then, the following will give you XML output if executed from the shell prompt with the “-X” option. For html output use the “-H” option.

mysql -X -e "select \* from exams" test

Mysql: Dumping data to a file

To dump data into a comma separated file use this:

  SELECT * INTO OUTFILE 'tablename.csv'
  FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' OPTIONALLY ENCLOSED BY '"'
  LINES TERMINATED BY 'n'
  FROM tablename;

Replace tablename with the tablename of the table you which to dump to a file.