Your MySQL instances are probably broken. Many developers face slow-running queries, issues related to database architecture, replication, or database security―and that’s only the beginning. This book will deliver answers to your most pressing MySQL database questions related to performance, availability, or security by uncovering what causes databases to break in the first place.

At its core, this book provides you with the knowledge necessary for you to break your database instances so you can better optimize it for performance and secure it from data breaches. In other words, you’ll discover the sorts of actions, minor and major, that degrade databases so you can fix and ultimately preempt them. MySQL sometimes acts according to its own rules, and this book will help you keep it working on your terms. At the same time, you will learn to optimize your backup and recovery procedures, determine when and which data to index to achieve maximum performance, and choose the best MySQL configurations, among other essential skills.

Most MySQL books focus exclusively on optimization, but this book argues that it’s just as important to pay attention to the ways databases break. Indeed, after reading this book, you will be able to safely break your database instances to expose and overcome the nuanced issues that affect performance, availability, and security.

What You Will Learn

• Know the basics of MySQL and the storage engines innoDB and MyISAM
• Spot the ways you are harming your database’s performance, availability and security without even realizing it
• Fix minor bugs and issues that have surprisingly serious impact
• Optimize schema, data types, queries, indexes, and partitions to head off issues
• Understand key MySQL security strategies

Lukas Vileikis is an ethical hacker, a MySQL database administrator, and a frequent conference speaker. He has worked on MySQL since late 2013, and since 2014, has found and responsibly disclosed security flaws in some of the most visited websites in Lithuania and abroad. Lukas honed his database administration skills while building and administering one of the biggest data breach search engines in the world: BreachDirectory.com, which is used by cyber security companies, individuals, as well as prominent universities worldwide. The website allows people to check whether they’re at risk of identity theft and then protect themselves on the web, and protects more and more people from all walks of life every single day. BreachDirectory has been running on MySQL ever since its inception and has been at the center of numerous awards, including at World Summit Awards 2020, where BreachDirectory was a national nominee nominated by the Lithuanian government to represent Lithuania against an international jury evaluating the best digital innovations in the world; and at Technorama 2021, a tech product-based event organized by Kaunas University of Technology (KTU), where BreachDirectory was nominated as the best product in the security space by Bentley Systems.

Outside of BreachDirectory, Lukas produces content situated around database management systems. He has written articles for Severalnines, Redgate, DbVisualizer, Arctype (now part of ClickHouse), dbWatch, and other companies, as well as managed writers in some of those companies (DbVisualizer, Arctype.) Some of his content has been also replicated by MySQL, MariaDB, and Percona. He also runs a YouTube channel under the moniker “Database Dive,” where he distills complex database topics into relatable explanations in video format. Lukas also talks and runs workshops at conferences like Percona LIVE, MariaDB Server Fest and MariaDB Unconferences, DevTalks Romania in Bucharest, Big Data Conference Europe and Build Stuff in Vilnius, he has taken part in “Dirty AI” and other software events in Spain, as well as spoken remotely at events like Nerdearla, Conf42, Software Architecture Conference, and others.

Lukas also runs his own blog at lukasvileikis.com and can be reached by email at lukas@lukasvileikis.com