Last week, I wrote about how to use bash arrays and the MySQL database to create unit and integration test scripts. While the MySQL example was nice for some users, there were some others who wanted me to show how to write bash shell scripts for Oracle unit and integration testing. That’s what this blog post does.

If you don’t know much about bash shell, you should start with the prior post to learn about bash arrays, if-statements, and for-loops. In this blog post I only cover how to implement a bash shell script that runs SQL scripts in silent mode and then queries the database in silent mode and writes the output to an external file.

I’ve copied the basic ERD for the example because of a request from a reader. In their opinion it makes cross referencing the …

Student questions are always interesting! They get me to think and to write. The question this time is: “How do I write a Bash Shell script to process multiple MySQL script files?” This post builds the following model (courtesy of MySQL Workbench) by using a bash shell script and MySQL script files, but there’s a disclaimer on this post. It shows both insecure and secure approaches and you should avoid the insecure ones.

It seems a quick refresher on how to use arrays in bash shell may be helpful. While it’s essential in a Linux environment, it’s seems not everyone masters the bash shell.

Especially, since I checked my …

Planning out my year, I decided to take the Oracle OCP and MySQL OCP exams. I checked for review books and was pleasantly surprised to find the soon to be released OCP MySQL Database Administrator Exam Guide (Exam 1Z0-883). However, I noticed that the book was actually prepared for the obsolete and discountinued Exams 1Z0-870, 1Z0-873, and 1Z0-874. As it turns out, Steve O’Hearn has informed me that there isn’t a book and that the posting in Amazon.com is in error.

Sometimes trying to keep a post short and to the point raises other questions. Clearly, my Python-MySQL Program post over the weekend did raise a question. They were extending the query example and encountered this error:

      TypeError: range() integer end argument expected, got tuple.

That should be a straight forward error message because of two things. First, the Python built-in range() function manages a range of numbers. Second, the row returned from a cursor is actually a tuple (from relational algebra), and it may contain non-numeric data like strings and dates.

The reader was trying to dynamically navigate the number of columns in a row by using the …

Configuring Perl to work with MySQL is the last part creating a complete Fedora Linux LAMP stack for my students. Perl is already installed on Fedora Linux.

I’ve also shown how to use PHP, Python, and Ruby languages to query a MySQL database on Linux. After installing this additional Perl DBI library, my students will have the opportunity to choose how they implement their LAMP solution.

You can find the Perl version with the following version.pl program:

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#!/usr/bin/perl -w
 
# Print the version.
print "Perl ".$]."\n";

What the MySQL team is doing with JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) in MySQL 5.7 is great! The MySQL Server Blog (Rick Hillegas and Dag Wanvik) published two key articles about new JSON functions. If you don’t follow these, let me highlight them as a set:

• JSON Functions, Part 1 – Manipulation JSON Data
• JSON Functions, Part 2 – Querying JSON Data

Most folks know how important JSON is to web development. I like the following visual that …

After you install Ruby and build the Rails framework, you need to create the mysql gem. This blog post shows you how to create the mysql gem and how to write a simple Ruby program that queries the MySQL database.

The first step creates the mysql gem for Ruby programming:

yum install mysql

It should show you the following:

Fetching: mysql-2.9.1.gem (100%)
Building native extensions.  This could take a while...
Successfully installed mysql-2.9.1
Parsing documentation for mysql-2.9.1
Installing ri documentation for mysql-2.9.1
Done installing documentation for mysql after 0 seconds
1 gem installed

After you install the mysql Ruby Gem, you can write and …

After installing the LAMP stack on Fedora, you need to open port 80 in the Firewall to access the PHP programs on the Fedora instance from external servers. You can open a firewall port by launching the firewall-config application as the root user with the following syntax:

firewall-config

The firewall-config utility opens the following dialog:

Click on the Ports tab, and you’ll see the following:

…

A student posed the question about why table names are case sensitive. That’s because case sensitive table names are the default installation, as qualified in the MySQL documentation. You can verify that with the following query:

SELECT CASE
         WHEN @@lower_case_table_names = 1 THEN
           'Case insensitive tables'
         ELSE
           'Case sensitive tables.'
         END AS "Table Name Status";

The default value returned on Linux is:

+------------------------+
| Table Name Status      |
+------------------------+
| Case sensitive tables. |
+------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

The default value for the lower_case_table_names value on the Windows OS is 1 not …

PostgreSQL’s approach to automatic numbering is as simple as Oracle but different than MySQL, and Microsoft SQL Server. For example, you have a two-step process with Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and Microsoft SQL Server. First, you create an Oracle table with the GENERATED AS IDENTITY clause, a PostgreSQL table with the SERIAL data type, a MySQL table with the AUTO_INCREMENT clause, and a Microsoft SQL Server table with the IDENTITY(1,1) clause. Then, you need to write an INSERT statement for Oracle, MySQL, or Microsoft SQL Server like:

1. Oracle’s INSERT statement excludes the auto-incrementing column from the list of columns or provides a NULL value in the VALUES-list. You can then assign the RETURNING INTO result from an INSERT statement to a session-level (bind) variable.
2. MySQL’s …