Complete MySQL Backups With Mysqldump

Searching around for instructions on how to properly backup a MySQL database will often lead you down a dark path filled with outdated, incomplete, or just plain incorrect examples. The official mysqldump documentation contains a wide variety of options and switches to tweak the final dump output, but most often you just want a complete backup of one or more databases for point-in-time snapshot. This post covers two example mysqldump usages that will work well for typical MySQL setups or as a baseline for more complex configurations. [Continue reading...] Complete MySQL Backups With Mysqldump

Setting Up A PostgreSQL Docker Sandbox

Sandboxes are very handy for isolated testing and demonstration purposes. As it happens, I began to write a post that was going to use a PostgreSQL Docker container as a sandbox and I decided it was better to break it out into its own post that could be referred to in future posts rather than add complexity to a post where it wasn't the main focus. [Continue reading...] Setting Up A PostgreSQL Docker Sandbox

Parsing Apache Logs Into A SQL Database

Parsing Apache HTTPD access logs into a database structure allows you to easily run queries and reports against it to better understand web traffic and detect issues. By using the pip installable apache_log_parser package and the sqlite3 python module that comes as part of the standard python library, we can quickly parse these access logs and insert entries into a sqlite3 database. [Continue reading...] Parsing Apache Logs Into A SQL Database