Author: Valerie Parham-Thompson

The pt-online-schema-change tool has been a workhorse for years, allowing MySQL DBAs to alter tables with minimal impact to application workload, and before MySQL had native online alter capabilities. Although consistently grateful for the tool’s existence, I never liked the…

Valerie Parham Thompson, Lead Database Consultant at Pythian, provides some sql statements to get some quick random data in MySQL.

Valerie Parham Thompson, Lead Database Consultant at Pythian, walks through enabling encryption for MySQL 5.7.

Pythian Lead Database Consultants Peter Sylvester and Valerie Parham-Thompson explain MariaDB Data Encryption at Rest.

One of my favorite tools for query optimization is profiling. But recently I noticed this warning: After looking through certain documentation , I should indeed start using the Performance Schema to get this information. Okay, so let’s give that a try….

I love finding out new things about MySQL. Last week, I stumbled on a query that had the phrase “SOUNDS LIKE” in it. Sounds made-up, right? Turns out MySQL is using a known “soundex” algorithm common to most databases, and…

As a MySQL DBA I already know the data changes that happen on my system. I have logs for that. However, it’s a common problem that several years into the life of an application, the current developers won’t know where…