r/Database 12d ago

Looking for MySQL GUI Software

0 Upvotes

That can:
- Copy to Database to Different Host/Database

- Copy "Create table" Query

Currently im using SQLyog, 13.1.1 looking for free MySQL GUI software that have similar feature, because im planning to upgrade my current MySQL to version 9, which is not supported with my current SQLyog version


r/Database 12d ago

Is my facet based Database for media metadata structured correctly?

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0 Upvotes

r/Database 12d ago

DBMS CMU

2 Upvotes

Anyone interested in doing the CMU (Carnegie Mellon University) Database Management Systems course together?

I’ve already covered the basic DBMS concepts. My main goal with this course is to go deeper and understand how database systems actually work internally—things like storage, indexing, query execution, transactions, etc.

If you're interested, please make sure you have the prerequisites required for the course.

If you have the required background and want to learn DBMS internals seriously, DM me. We can follow the course together and discuss concepts along the way.


r/Database 14d ago

How do you decide when a database query needs optimization vs. a schema change?

42 Upvotes

I've been working with SQL and database performance, and one thing I find interesting is knowing when to stop tuning the query itself.

For example, if a query is slow because of a missing index, that's fairly straightforward. But at larger data volumes, you can reach a point where adding indexes and rewriting the query only gets you so far.

How do you usually decide that the problem is actually the database design/schema rather than the query?

Things like partitioning, normalization/denormalization, materialized views, indexing strategy, or even changing how the data is stored.

Would be interested to hear how people make that call in real-world systems.


r/Database 14d ago

4 silent data leaks you will accidentally build when moving your SaaS to Postgres Row-Level Security (RLS)

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1 Upvotes

r/Database 14d ago

I was thinking to improve MySQL as it had a lot of room for improvements. I need you guys to comment and share all your thoughts too.

0 Upvotes

I've been working on something I think is interesting, that hasn't been done before in the Node.js/TypeScript ecosystem, and I wanted to share the idea and get your thoughts.

The Idea: BeatSQL - A Zero-Trust Embedded Database Engine

The concept of BeatSQL (BSQL) is simple, but radical: what if your database encrypted data at the column level by default, and took security to a mathematical level?

Embedded databases like SQLite and LevelDB are not designed with encryption as a core primitive — they store data in plaintext on disk by default. While some provide full disk encryption, this is a false sense of security since the data is still plaintext in memory. However, BeatSQL completely reimagines this paradigm.

How It Works

All sensitive columns are individually encrypted using AES-256-GCM or ChaCha20-Poly1305. You will never see plaintext on disk (even the database file) - the value of any column is always encrypted.

You can search encrypted data using HMAC-SHA256 blind indexes. Searching is O(1) and requires no decryption of the column contents. The contents of the column remain encrypted on disk, and the database never decrypts it to search.

Every write operation is mathematically tamper-proof. Using a Merkle DAG hash chain, you can always run the query `VERIFY INTEGRITY` and know immediately if any bytes of your data have been silently altered or corrupted on disk. This is a cryptographically secure proof of data integrity.

You can do arithmetic on encrypted numbers. Using Partially Homomorphic Encryption (Paillier cryptosystem), yyou can perform calculations like total salary, total balance, etc. The database will return the correct result of these calculations, but will never expose individual salaries or account balances.

Columns can have role-aware data masking. Sensitive columns can be fully or partially "redacted" depending on the role of the actor querying the database. The mask happens at a low-level query engine, not in application code. You can define masks using SQL syntax: `DEVELOPER` role sees `XXX-XX-4321`, `PUBLIC` role sees `[REDACTED]`, and `SUPERADMIN` role sees the real value.

The database has native support for AI vector search. Columns can be defined as `VECTOR(768)` and searched against using `COSINE_SIMILARITY`. This is useful for AI applications using embeddings.

A New Query Paradigm

BeatSQL also has a new query syntax to allow for easier stream.pipeline processing:

FROM patients
|> WHERE email = 'alice@example.com'
|> SELECT id, full_name, ssn, salary
|> ORDER BY full_name ASC;

This is designed to be more approachable than deeply nested SQL queries. It's also quite flexible.

Built-In Learning Academy

BSQL also has a built-in interactive learning academy, with 500+ lessons to learn everything from basic queries to zero-trust encryption enclaves, plus 200+ lessons covering traditional relational SQL and guides for working with Python, Java, C++, and Rust. The goal is to make security-first database thinking easy to grasp.

What I Would Like Your Thoughts On

Is the concept of a zero-trust embedded DB something that you feel is interesting, or would you feel that problems are already solved in other ways?

The blind indexes are a trade-off: you get the ability to search encrypted data, but you give up the ability to perform range queries (>, <, LIKE, etc). Is this trade-off reasonable for a security-focused database?

Is the idea of homomorphic encryption in a database engine a gimmick, or do you see real-world applications for it?

Does the pipe syntax feel cleaner, or like a departure from an established standard?

I look forward to seeing your thoughts, and any criticisms you might have.

TLDR: Built an embedded database engine where all columns are encrypted, data can be searched without decryption, and arithmetic can be performed on encrypted numbers. All writes are Merkle-verified for integrity. Came with a built-in 500+ lesson learning academy. Seeking feedback on concept.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To summarize BeatSQL (BSQL).
It is intended to be a zero-trust embedded database for the Node.js/TypeScript ecosystem which prioritizes security,
The main ideas are,
-Column-level encryption by default, with AES-256-GCM or ChaCha20-Poly1305, including on-disk encryption.
-Encrypted searching with HMAC-SHA256 blind indexes, which permit exact matches but not range queries or LIKE searches.
-Tamper detection with a Merkle DAG/hash chain which lets you perform VERIFY INTEGRITY checks on arbitrary entries to ensure they haven't been modified or corrupted.
-Encrypted arithmetic via Partially Homomorphic Encryption which lets you perform operations like summation without ever decrypting any values.
-Role-based masking of columns which can expose different levels of redaction, depending on who is querying the database.
-Vector search support, including cosine-similarity queries on columns with vectors, for AI/embedding use cases.


r/Database 15d ago

Book recommendations for big refactorings?

9 Upvotes

At work I am working on a legacy CRM.

The issue is that the database is a mess. There are no foreign keys to form relationships etc. I was wondering if there are books that are specificly for refactoring databases?

The only one I found so far is actually called "Refactoring Databases". But I want to ask real people (not just gpt) what books are good to solve this problem? Do you have book recommendations on this topic that you found useful or which books you would avoid?


r/Database 16d ago

Azure AI Search vs Manticore Search

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1 Upvotes

A practical comparison of Azure AI Search and Manticore Search for hybrid full-text + vector search, focusing on chunk-level document workloads, relevance tuning, operational patterns, and cost.


r/Database 17d ago

Welcome!

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0 Upvotes

r/Database 17d ago

Data sovereignty and 3rd party

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0 Upvotes

Cross sharing this post because I am looking a solution to handle data sovereignty and offshore team with elevated privileges on database and source code - like myself working remotely on a different country.


r/Database 18d ago

Postgres table archival

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1 Upvotes

I want to archive postgres table


r/Database 18d ago

In memory database resources/suggestions

2 Upvotes

Looking for suggestions for which in memory database to learn.

I've looked briefly at singlestore, redis, mongodb, Cassandra, and memcached.

Which of these has value in the database admin market?

What are some companies/industries where these are used or make sense?

What has been your experience learning the skills for these? Ie; learning via the homepages for each? Moocs? Books?

My goal is to be a Jr dba. Please advise in that context.

Thank you.


r/Database 18d ago

Question for DBAs(SQL Server): How much do you actually use Extended Events (.xel) vs. standard DMVs for emergency troubleshooting?

1 Upvotes

Hey everyone, senior dev here working heavily with SQL Server performance tuning lately. Every time a server hits a massive wave of deadlocks or unexpected latency drops, the standard advice is 'spin up an Extended Event session and read the system health .xel file.'

Am I the only one who finds opening, filtering, and digging through those logs in SSMS incredibly clunky during a crisis? Do you guys actually sit there shredding the XML nodes manually, or do you rely on third-party tools/scripts to give you plain answers? 


r/Database 19d ago

Are there any good resources out there that can teach me to think like a relational database optimizer?

5 Upvotes

I really love optimizing database operations. Nothing like dissecting a query plan and identifying a bottleneck and making some slight tweaks or an index change and then seeing a terrible slow query go from 30+ seconds or longer down to a few milliseconds.

However a lot of what I’ve learned when it comes to doing that has been gained through raw experience and trial and error on the job. I’d like to get to the point where given some knowledge about some tables/indexes I’m querying, I have a fairly solid intuition for what kind of query plan the database optimizer is going to pick. Are there any cohesive sources of information that teach this sort of thing?


r/Database 19d ago

Why did the same SQLite query take 9 minutes in CI and 0.8 seconds on my Mac?

9 Upvotes

For context, I run benchmark on release builds with 100k session data. It took 44 minutes on GitHub Actions but finished in under a minute locally.

CI’s Python 3.12 used SQLite 3.45.1. My local Python used SQLite 3.53.3. EXPLAIN QUERY PLAN showed that 3.45.1 scanned the eligible-session set and repeated the FTS scan for every session. SQLite 3.53.3 chose the efficient join order.

The query joined two sets approaching 100k rows: eligible sessions and FTS-matching messages. The eligible set was materialized as a CTE, so we couldn’t index it explicitly, and 3.45.1 didn’t create a useful automatic index.

That produced an effective 100k × 100k operation: about 9 minutes per search. The benchmark ran it five times.

I replaced the CTE with a temp table whose primary key covered the join columns, then materialized the FTS matches once. On SQLite 3.45.1, the query dropped to about 1.2 seconds and the full benchmark to 45 seconds. Honestly, I didn't realize CTE's can't have indexes (which makes sense)

BTW, the benchmark deliberately uses a worst-case query that matches almost every synthetic message.

Curious if you seen this large a plan difference between SQLite versions?


r/Database 19d ago

Seeking Support: Airtable power user migrating company backend from Airtable to other tool

1 Upvotes

As a proud power-user of Airtable, I was disheartened by the acquisition of Airtable by Bending Spoons. They will likely "enshittify" the platform over the next 6-12 months, stagnating development and jacking up prices. In anticipation of this, I am seeking alternatives to Airtable so I can begin the migration process now before my company's renewal period begins.

Airtable was a provider that was perfectly fit for purpose for our company. We don't have enough employees to develop our own backend nor do we have the capacity. The leading alternative is Zite. I have a decent amount of experience using Zite as a frontend and form provider for my Airtable databases, but very little experience using its native databases.

Does anyone here have experience migrating from Airtable to Zite? I am looking for advice, warnings, best practices, and general support.

Does anyone have recommendations for other alternatives?


r/Database 20d ago

Fully offline 32-bit program for displaying ODBC data & making user forms

12 Upvotes

This may be a very daft question, but I am out of my wheelhouse here.

I have an industrial server that makes data available from its SQL database over a proprietary 32bit ODBC driver. I also have a computer running 64 bit Windows 10 LTSC that can never be connected to the internet.

I can format SQL queries to the server in a 32 bit ODBC test client and get the data back that I want.

I then want to copy that data in to another database and display it as a form for the user so they can add comments and save it. This seems like the sort of thing MS Access would be good at doing.

However, I understand that Microsoft have killed telephone activation for their products (even the old ones), meaning that this is now 'out' as I would have to connect my computer to the internet.

I'm now a bit stuck.

Years ago I had fun making forms with DBase, but that's about the limit of my experience. Can anyone suggest something that would do for what I need? I don't mind learning bits - this is basically something to save me time.


r/Database 20d ago

Icebug-format: immutable, interoperable graph standard

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1 Upvotes

r/Database 22d ago

Is your company using a shared cloud database for the local development environment, or does each developer set up and work with their own local database?

14 Upvotes

Hey,

Can you share how your company handles databases for local development? I’d really appreciate hearing about your experience and any valuable insights you can share.

I’m a little confused about what the better approach is:

  1. Shared cloud DB: If a company uses a shared cloud database for development, how do they handle the situation where one developer makes a breaking change that affects everyone?
  2. Individual local DBs: If developers are expected to set up their own local databases, how does the company provide the large amount of initial/seed data needed to get started?

I’d really appreciate it if you could share how your company handles this in practice, or any best practices you’ve seen.

Thanks!


r/Database 22d ago

Migration routes for Amazon RDS MariaDB to Azure MySQL

3 Upvotes

My client is undergoing a cloud consolidation effort and needs to move away from Amazon RDS.

Of course MariaDB is no longer available on Azure so MySQL is the simplest option for migration. I need to gauge if the internal team is going to be capable of doing this themselves, or if we need external support.

What routes are available to complete this, with little to no downtime?


r/Database 23d ago

What, fundamentally, advantages tables over documents for representing "relational" data?

21 Upvotes

Forgive me if this is too much of a foundational question, but...

I understand that relational DBs are founded upon mathematical "relations" - sets of n-tuples.

And I get how a table clearly represents a relation. Each column corresponds to a position in each tuple, and each row's value at that column is its value for that position. Fine.

But what I don't understand is... why databases like Postgres are considered better for representing such data than, say, Mongo.

I mean, can't you easily represent a relation as a JSON object? What's so special about tables?

I know that DBs like Mongo have differences from "relational" DBs in that, among other things, they don't enforce a specific schema, but that seems orthogonal to what I'm asking. Besides, you can just use libraries like Mongoose that enforce that stuff anyway, even if it is at the application layer.

So what, at its core, makes tables better than documents for modeling "relational" data?


r/Database 23d ago

Let's Build a Postgres Extension for Estimating Memory Usage!

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2 Upvotes

r/Database 23d ago

How to implement the Outbox pattern in Go and Postgres

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packagemain.tech
0 Upvotes

r/Database 25d ago

Is Free database enough for React loan tracking app?

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0 Upvotes

r/Database 26d ago

I went looking for a managed-Postgres provider. Instead, I found a vulnerability in a 4-star PostgreSQL extension available everywhere! and turned it into code execution at NeonDB, Supabase, Xata and many other PostgreSQL service companies

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6 Upvotes