[plug] MySQL for PostgreSQL users

[Tim Bowden]

On Fri, 2008-09-19 at 14:52 +1000, Daniel Pittman wrote:
> Tim Bowden <tim.bowden at westnet.com.au> writes:
> > On Wed, 2008-09-17 at 13:44 +0800, Peter Wright wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
> >> For example, I ran into a really irritating problem recently where
> >> doing something like:
> >> 
> >>   $ mysql -u username -p -h localhost
> >> 
> >> (ie. connect to localhost as user "username", ask for password) would
> >> throw a bizarre error about not being able to find the appropriate
> >> mysql.sock file (used for Unix socket connections, which are
> >> completely different to TCP connections - and this particular MySQL
> >> was misconfigured so there was no .sock file available).
> >> 
> >> It turned out that that version of MySQL would try to be "clever"
> >> and, if you supplied "localhost" as the host, would silently decide
> >> that you must have really wanted to do a Unix socket connection. So
> >> it would try to do that and of course fail, leaving me utterly
> >> confused.
> >> 
> >> Only if you supplied '-h 127.0.0.1' instead of '-h localhost' would
> >> it do a proper TCP connection. Grrrrrrr.
> >
> > Oh, that is evil.  Thanks for the warning.  It's the sort of snafu
> > that can waste hours.
> 
> Oh, that sort of SNAFU is par for the course with MySQL; keep in mind
> that it will silently corrupt ^W modify data, such as truncating string
> input or transforming invalid string content into '0', in many cases.
> 

Are you serious?  The data should *never* be silently changed (or
non-silently for that matter).  If it can't do what's asked, it should
fail. Always.

> You can set an option, per connection, to ask MySQL to actually be
> standards complaint, which I advise.  This makes many, but (IIRC) not
> all, of these evil, hateful things move from warnings[1] to errors.
> 

Correct and sane behaviour is an option?  Bloody hell.

> >> Pete, now having flashbacks to all the other reasons he hates MySQL.
> >
> > And I'm learning my own.  The pagination of output in the mysql client
> > is (more or less) nonexistent, unlike in psql where it (more or less,
> > take your pick) works beautifully.
> 
> The worst part is that the supported subset of SQL varies between the
> different storage engines, or possibly that there isn't a MySQL using
> application out there that actually /works/ with strict mode enabled...
> 
> Regards,
>         Daniel
> 
> Footnotes: 
> [1]  ...which nothing in the universe ever checks, and heck, what are
>      you going to do?  Alert the user that your database didn't store
>      what they entered, but rather something semi-random?
> 

Getting down to business, is there any way to force MySQL to log bad
connection attempts?  I can't seem to find anything obvious.  I'm using
debians 5.0 MySQL fwiw.

Regards,
Tim Bowden
-- 
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake
when you make it again.