Table of Contents for
Mastering phpMyAdmin 3.4 for Effective MySQL Management

Version ebook / Retour

Cover image for bash Cookbook, 2nd Edition Mastering phpMyAdmin 3.4 for Effective MySQL Management by Marc Delisle Published by Packt Publishing, 2012
  1. Cover
  2. Mastering phpMyAdmin 3.4 for Effective MySQL Management
  3. Mastering phpMyAdmin 3.4 for Effective MySQL Management
  4. Credits
  5. About the Author
  6. About the Reviewers
  7. www.PacktPub.com
  8. Preface
  9. What you need for this book
  10. Who this book is for
  11. Conventions
  12. Reader feedback
  13. Customer support
  14. 1. Getting Started with phpMyAdmin
  15. What is phpMyAdmin?
  16. Installing phpMyAdmin
  17. Configuring phpMyAdmin
  18. Installing phpMyAdmin configuration storage
  19. Upgrading phpMyAdmin
  20. Summary
  21. 2. Configuring Authentication and Security
  22. Securing phpMyAdmin
  23. Summary
  24. 3. Over Viewing the Interface
  25. Customizing general settings
  26. Character sets and collations
  27. Navigation panel
  28. Main panel
  29. User preferences
  30. Query window
  31. Summary
  32. 4. Creating and Browsing Tables
  33. Creating our first table
  34. Inserting data manually
  35. Browse mode
  36. Profiling queries
  37. Creating an additional table
  38. Summary
  39. 5. Changing Data and Structure
  40. Changing table structure
  41. Summary
  42. 6. Exporting Structure and Data (Backup)
  43. Exporting a database
  44. Exporting a table
  45. Exporting selectively
  46. Exporting multiple databases
  47. Saving the export file on the server
  48. Memory limits
  49. Summary
  50. 7. Importing Structure and Data
  51. Importing SQL files
  52. Importing CSV files
  53. Importing other formats
  54. Reading files from a web server upload directory
  55. Displaying an upload progress bar
  56. Summary
  57. 8. Searching Data
  58. Performing a complete database search
  59. Stopping an errant query
  60. Summary
  61. 9. Performing Table and Database Operations
  62. Changing table attributes
  63. Emptying or deleting a table
  64. Renaming, moving, and copying tables
  65. Performing other table operations
  66. Multi-table operations
  67. Database operations
  68. Summary
  69. 10. Benefiting from the Relational System
  70. Defining relations with the relation view
  71. Defining relations with the Designer
  72. Benefiting from the defined relations
  73. Column commenting
  74. Summary
  75. 11. Entering SQL Statements
  76. The Query window
  77. Multi-statement queries
  78. Pretty printing (syntax highlighting)
  79. The SQL Validator
  80. Summary
  81. 12. Generating Multi-table Queries
  82. Exploring column criteria
  83. Generating automatic joins (internal relations)
  84. Executing the query
  85. The visual builder
  86. Summary
  87. 13. Synchronizing Data and Supporting Replication
  88. Supporting MySQL replication
  89. Summary
  90. 14. Using Query Bookmarks
  91. Creating bookmarks
  92. Recalling bookmarks from the bookmarks list
  93. Passing a parameter to a bookmark
  94. Summary
  95. 15. Documenting the System
  96. Generating relational schemas
  97. Summary
  98. 16. Transforming Data using MIME
  99. Enabling transformations
  100. Examples of transformations
  101. Summary
  102. 17. Supporting Features Added in MySQL 5
  103. Supporting routines—stored procedures and functions
  104. Executing code with triggers
  105. Using information_schema
  106. Partitioning
  107. Exploring the event scheduler
  108. Summary
  109. 18. Tracking Changes
  110. Prerequisites
  111. Principles
  112. Initiating tracking for one table
  113. Testing the tracking mechanism
  114. Determining tracking status
  115. Structure snapshot
  116. Exporting a version
  117. Creating a new version
  118. Deleting tracking information
  119. Summary
  120. 19. Administrating the MySQL Server
  121. Database information
  122. Server information
  123. Summary
  124. A. Troubleshooting and Support
  125. Seeking support
  126. Contributing to the project

The SQL Validator

Each time phpMyAdmin transmits a query, the MySQL server interprets it and provides feedback. The syntax of the query must follow MySQL rules, which are not the same as the SQL Standard. However, conforming to SQL Standard ensures that our queries are usable on other SQL implementations.

A free external service, the Mimer SQL Validator, is available to us, thanks to Mimer Information Technology AB. It validates our query according to the Core SQL-99 rules and generates a report. The Validator is available directly from phpMyAdmin, and its home page is located at http://developer.mimer.com/validator/index.htm.

Note

For statistical purposes, this service anonymously stores on its server, the queries it receives. When storing the queries, it replaces database, table, and column names with generic names. Strings and numbers that are part of the query are replaced with generic values so as to protect the original information.

System requirements

This Validator is available as a SOAP service. Our PHP server must have XML, PCRE, and SOAP support. SOAP support is offered by either a PHP extension or by a PEAR module. If we choose the PEAR way, the following command (executed on the server by the system administrator) installs the modules we need: 

pear install Net_Socket Net_URL HTTP_Request Mail_Mime Net_DIME SOAP

If we have problems with this command due to some of the modules being in a beta state, we can execute the following command, which installs SOAP and other dependent modules:

pear -d preferred_state=beta install -a SOAP

Making the Validator available

Some parameters must be configured in config.inc.php. Setting $cfg['SQLQuery']['Validate'] to TRUE enables the Validate SQL link.

We should also enable the Validator itself (as other validators might be available on future phpMyAdmin versions). This is done by setting $cfg['SQLValidator']['use'] to TRUE.

The Validator is accessed with an anonymous Validator account by default, as configured using the following commands:

$cfg['SQLValidator']['username'] = '';
$cfg['SQLValidator']['password'] = '';

Instead, if Mimer Information Technology has provided us with an account, we can use that account information here.

Validator results

There are two kinds of reports returned by the Validator—one if the query conforms to the standard, and the other if it does not conform.

Standard-conforming queries

We will try a simple query: SELECT COUNT(*) FROM book. As usual, we enter this query in the query box and send it. On the results page, we now see an additional link— Validate SQL as shown in the following screenshot:

Standard-conforming queries

Clicking on Validate SQL produces a report as shown in the following screenshot:

Standard-conforming queries

We have the option of clicking on Skip Validate SQL to see our original query.

Non standard-conforming queries

Let us try another query, which works correctly in MySQL: SELECT * FROM book WHERE language = 'en'. Sending it to the Validator produces a report as shown in the following screenshot:

Non standard-conforming queries

Each time the Validator finds a problem, it adds a message such as {error: 1} at the point of the error and adds a footnote in the report. In this query, the language column name is non-standard. Hence, the Validator tells us that it was expecting an identifier at this point. Another non-standard error is reported about the use of a LIMIT clause, which was added to the query by phpMyAdmin.

Another case is that of the backquote. If we just click on Browse for the book table, phpMyAdmin generates SELECT * FROM `book`, enclosing the table name with backquote. This is MySQL's way of protecting identifiers, which might contain special characters, such as spaces, international characters, or reserved words. However, sending this query to the Validator shows us that the backquotes do not conform to standard SQL. We may even get two errors, one for each backquote.