The most popular open-source database engine in the world, MySQL is a powerful database engine known for its high performance, reliability and ease of use. Many large internet companies use MySQL to power their databases and applications based on the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl/Python). MySQL is platform-independent and runs on more than 20…
Security is an essential consideration for any computer system and MySQL is no exception to this rule. One big security problem that administrators can often overlook is obsolete accounts. These accounts were created for people who no longer use them and are big security holes waiting to be found. The user table stores user accounts,…
On a standard MySQL installation, remote access is disabled by default. This is great if you are sitting next to your server but generally inconvenient if you are not. With the advent of modern support teams spanning the globe, it is entirely possible to administer a server that is in a different country or continent…
It does not matter what data is stored in your database, you want to prevent unauthorized access. If the data is not secure, then anyone with the time and motivation can potentially access it over the internet. Once they are in your database, they can take all your data or delete it if they want….
It does not matter how well you can write queries in MySQL; if the underlying schema is not optimized, it will slow your database performance down. This is not just removing unwanted fields, but you need to make sure that your fields are storing data with the correct size. One example of this is a…
One of the big deciding factors in the performance of your database is the design of the database. Research from various parties, including Oracle, has found that poor database design is a major factor in poor database performance and unscheduled system downtime. One great way to improve the performance of your MySQL database is to…
Even the best MySQL implementation will sometimes have problems with processes taking too long and hogging the CPU and memory. This will have a knock-on effect on any other processes running on the server and can have a significant effect on performance. In an ideal world, you could just increase the resources available to the…
One of the best ways to check the performance of your MySQL application is to benchmark it regularly. Put the application under as much load as you can to simulate the worst possible reasonable load and check the performance. Several functions within MySQL can help you to test your databases. One of the most useful…
One of the most critical tasks for a MySQL administrator is reliably backing up and restoring databases. This, of course, helps to prevent data loss in the event of a hardware failure, data corruption… or a little accident. Most modern hosting/server solutions have some kind of database backup solution available. However, many people prefer to…
