Blog

#WDILTW – Creating examples can be hard

This week I was evaluating AWS QLDB . Specifically the verifiable history of changes to determine how to simplify present processes that perform auditing via CDC. This is not the first time I have looked at QLDB so there was nothing that new to learn.

Read more

#WDILTW – What can I run from my AWS Aurora database

When you work with AWS Aurora you have limited admin privileges. There are some different grants for MySQL including SELECT INTO S3 and LOAD FROM S3 that replace the loss of functionality to SELECT INTO OUTFILE and mysqldump/mysqlimport using a delimited format.

Read more

#WDILTW – To use a RDBMS is to use a transaction

I learned this week that 30+ years of Relational Database Management System (RDBMS ) experience still does not prepare yourself for the disappointment of working with organizations that use a RDBMS; MySQL specifically; have a released production product, have dozens to hundreds of developers, team leaders and architects, but do not know the importance of, nor use transactions.

Read more

#WDILTW – Debugging failed http requests thru the web of redirects

There are reports that your website is down. You pull up the login page without incident. What’s next? Monitoring is critical. How detailed is this? How frequently are you sampling? The resolution to any issue is only as good as the response to a paged alert.

Read more

#WDILTW – AWS RDS Proxy

This week I was evaluating AWS RDS Proxy . If you are familiar with the Relational Database Service (RDS) and use MySQL or Postgres, this is an additional option to consider.

Read more

TDD for Infrastructure

Test Driven Development (TDD) is an important principle for producing quality software. This is not a new concept. The Extreme Programming (XP) agile methodology (1999) outlined the concept before the acronym became more widely accepted as “Another requirement is testability.

Read more

Enforcing a least privileged security model can be hard

In a greenfield environment you generally have the luxury to right any wrongs of any past tech debt. It can be more difficult to apply this to an existing environment? For example, my setup is configured to just work with the AWS CLI and various litmus tests to validate that.

Read more

Defensive Data Techniques

As a data architect I always ensure that for any database schema change there a fully recoverable execution path. I have generally advised to create a patch/revert process for every change.

Read more

MySQL Data Security Risk Assessment presentation

Securing your data is only as good as your weakest link. A clear-text password in a file or history file, shared privileges between test and production or open sudo access when you can connect as an unprivileged user all are security flaws.

Read more

Identifying MySQL SSL communication using ngrep

Prior to MySQL 5.7 client communications with a MySQL instance were unencrypted by default. This plaintext capability allowed for various tools including pt-query-digest to analyze TCP/IP traffic. Starting with MySQL 5.

Read more

Testing MySQL/MariaDB/Percona versions with Docker

Giuseppe Maxia has provided some great MySQL docker images . Percona and MariaDB also provide version via Docker Hub. In an attempt to have a consistent means of launching these different images I created the following convenience functions.

Read more

Getting a clearer picture of http response time breakdown via CLI

I came across this handy python script https://github.com/reorx/httpstat that provides a http response breakdown in text. This saves you having to open up a browser and look at a visual network response waterfall.

Read more

OTN appreciation day: The Performance Schema of MySQL 5.6+

To focus on just one point for OTN appreciation day on October 11 2016 and to the benefit of all users of MySQL is to consider the extremely convenient and rich value of information available in the MySQL Performance Schema to understand what SQL queries are running in a MySQL instance now.

Read more

MySQL Group Replication OOW Tutorial

Download Slides The second MySQL tutorial session at Oracle Open World was “MySQL Group Replication in a Nutshell” by MySQL Community Manager Frederic Descamps. This is succinctly described as: “Multi-master update anywhere replication for MySQL with built-in conflict detection and resolution, automatic distributed recovery, and group membership.

Read more