The rlwrap utility for DBA.

Posted in: MySQL, Technical Track

Recently I received a request from one of our clients asking the way to mysqldump data only from a view. The request sounds reasonable at the first glance, but after thinking it a little bit further, we will find out that it is mission impossible. We can use alternative ways to achieve the same purpose though.

According to the MySQL documentation (https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/mysqldump.html), “The mysqldump client utility performs logical backups, producing a set of SQL statements that can be executed to reproduce the original database object definitions and table data.” So mysqldump will be able to get the database object definitions as table, view, procedure, trigger, etc. and the data of tables.

As we know, views are stored queries that when invoked produce a result set. A view acts as a virtual table. Mysqldump will only dump out the definition of a view (virtual table/stored query) but not the results of it (virtual table/stored query). If we try to dump out a view with –no-create-info, then nothing will be dumped out!

Example 1: mysqldump out a view will dump out the view definition only:

[[email protected] ~]# mysqldump -uroot -p --extended-insert -S /mysql/data/mysqld.socket m_test m_view > m.dump.sql
Enter password:
[[email protected] ~]# cat m.dump.sql
-- MySQL dump 10.13 Distrib 5.6.26, for linux-glibc2.5 (x86_64)
-- Host: localhost Database: m_test
-- Server version 5.6.26-log
/*!40101 SET @[email protected]@CHARACTER_SET_CLIENT */;
/*!40101 SET @[email protected]@CHARACTER_SET_RESULTS */;
/*!40101 SET @[email protected]@COLLATION_CONNECTION */;
/*!40101 SET NAMES utf8 */;
/*!40103 SET @[email protected]@TIME_ZONE */;
/*!40103 SET TIME_ZONE='+00:00' */;
/*!40014 SET @[email protected]@UNIQUE_CHECKS, UNIQUE_CHECKS=0 */;
/*!40014 SET @[email protected]@FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS, FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=0 */;
/*!40101 SET @[email protected]@SQL_MODE, SQL_MODE='NO_AUTO_VALUE_ON_ZERO' */;
/*!40111 SET @[email protected]@SQL_NOTES, SQL_NOTES=0 */;
-- Temporary view structure for view `m_view`
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS `m_view`;
/*!50001 DROP VIEW IF EXISTS `m_view`*/;
SET @saved_cs_client = @@character_set_client;
SET character_set_client = utf8;
/*!50001 CREATE VIEW `m_view` AS SELECT
1 AS `id`,
1 AS `insert_time`*/;
SET character_set_client = @saved_cs_client;
-- Final view structure for view `m_view`
/*!50001 DROP VIEW IF EXISTS `m_view`*/;
/*!50001 SET @saved_cs_client = @@character_set_client */;
/*!50001 SET @saved_cs_results = @@character_set_results */;
/*!50001 SET @saved_col_connection = @@collation_connection */;
/*!50001 SET character_set_client = utf8 */;
/*!50001 SET character_set_results = utf8 */;
/*!50001 SET collation_connection = utf8_general_ci */;
/*!50001 CREATE ALGORITHM=UNDEFINED */
bin directory in standard path.
It works if you have several similar, binary compatible systems and don't want to spend time compiling the same binaries on each one.

[[email protected]]$cd rlwrap-0.42
[[email protected]]$ls -l src/rlwrap
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root 225023 Aug 16 12:49 src/rlwrap
[[email protected]]$cp src/rlwrap /usr/local/bin/
[ro[email protected]]$rlwrap --help
Usage: rlwrap [options] command ...
Options:
  -a[password prompt]        --always-readline[=password prompt]
  -A                         --ansi-colour-aware
.....

Of course you may consider to make your own rpm or use EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux) yum repository and install it from there. Just keep in mind the version you get from EPEL may be slightly outdated.

[[email protected]]$yum install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-6.noarch.rpm
[[email protected]]$yum install rlwrap

Having the rlwrap installed you may find use for it.
Here some basic examples how you can use the utility:
Create an alias in your bashrc for sqlplus :

vi ~/.bashrc

and add

alias sqlp='rlwrap sqlplus'

The same you can do for rman :

alias rman='rlwrap rman'

For Oracle GoldenGate command line utility

alias ggsci='rlwrap ./ggsci'

In rlwrap you can use ! and TAB to call list of commands or use prefix and CTRL+R to search for certain command in command history. Also you can create your own dictionary and use it for auto completion.
Let's try to build some dictionary for auto-completion
I created a file "lsql.lst" with the following contents:

[[email protected] ~]$ vi lsql.lst
~
select
from
where
and
update
insert
delete
tablespace
v$database
....
[[email protected] ~]$alias sqlp="rlwrap -f lsql.lst sqlplus / as sysdba"
[[email protected] ~]$ sqlp
SQL*Plus: Release 12.1.0.2.0 Production on Wed Aug 17 15:36:04 2016
Copyright (c) 1982, 2014, Oracle.  All rights reserved.
Connected to:
Oracle Database 12c Enterprise Edition Release 12.1.0.2.0 - 64bit Production
.............................................
cdb> desc v$t

--- here we are pressing TAB and getting list of suggestions:

cdb> desc v$t
table       tablespace
cdb> desc v$tablespace
 Name														   Null?    Type
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 TS#															    NUMBER

We can make it even better. Let's upload name for all dba_views
In our sqlplus session we run :

cdb> spool lsql.lst append
cdb> select name from V$FIXED_TABLE;
......
cdb>spool off

logoff and logon again to reload the file and try :

cdb> select * from V$PA -- TAB
PARALLEL_DEGREE_LIMIT_MTH  PARAMETER                  PARAMETER2                 PARAMETER_VALID_VALUES     PATCHES
cdb> select * from V$B -- TAB
BACKUP                       BACKUP_CONTROLFILE_SUMMARY   BACKUP_DATAFILE_SUMMARY      BACKUP_SET                   BACKUP_SYNC_IO               BSP                          BUFFERED_PUBLISHERS
BACKUP_ARCHIVELOG_DETAILS    BACKUP_COPY_DETAILS          BACKUP_DEVICE                BACKUP_SET_DETAILS           BGPROCESS                    BTS_STAT                     BUFFERED_QUEUES
BACKUP_ARCHIVELOG_SUMMARY    BACKUP_COPY_SUMMARY          BACKUP_NONLOGGED             BACKUP_SET_SUMMARY           BH                           BT_SCAN_CACHE                BUFFERED_SUBSCRIBERS
BACKUP_ASYNC_IO              BACKUP_CORRUPTION            BACKUP_PIECE                 BACKUP_SPFILE                BLOCKING_QUIESCE             BT_SCAN_OBJ_TEMPS            BUFFER_POOL
BACKUP_COMPRESSION_PROGRESS  BACKUP_DATAFILE              BACKUP_PIECE_DETAILS         BACKUP_SPFILE_DETAILS        BLOCK_CHANGE_TRACKING        BUFFER                       BUFFER_POOL_STATISTICS
BACKUP_CONTROLFILE_DETAILS   BACKUP_DATAFILE_DETAILS      BACKUP_REDOLOG               BACKUP_SPFILE_SUMMARY        BMAPNONDURSUB                BUFFER2
cdb> select * from V$B

You can see we have all "V$" views and it can be extremely handy when you don't really have any time to search for a view name and only vaguely remember that you have a view to look up for certain information.

The rlwrap may not be most sophisticated program but it can make your life much easier. There may be a more advanced tool for sqlplus like SQLcl that provides a lot more options. But—the beauty of rlwrap is in its "lightness" and ability to work not only with sqlplus, but with practically any command line tool.

email

Author

Want to talk with an expert? Schedule a call with our team to get the conversation started.

1 Comment. Leave new

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *