What?
This is an article to document how to output the most frequently used words in a MySQL database column.

How?
Note this only applies to MySQL.

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Sometimes it is critical to ensure a group of queries are all executed successfully to maintain the integrity of our data. Let's say we have a banking app where we need to subtract funds from one account and add funds to another:

$mysqli->query ("UPDATE 'accounts' SET 'balance' = 'balance'-1000000 WHERE 'user' = 'Bob'");
$mysqli->query ("UPDATE 'accounts' SET 'balance' = 'balance'+1000000 WHERE 'user' = 'Fred'");

What if one of the queries fails? To mitigate the chances of misplacing our millions due to some possible error we must ensure that both queries are executed with the expected result before committing any changes to the data. This where transactions are useful. We can run the queries, then check if some conditions are met before committing the changes in the data:

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What?
A quick article on how to trim in MySQL along with getting rid of any leading or trailing tab characters.

Why?
I use MS Excel for organizing data and then converting to MySQL commands. Unfortunately, the MS Excel software adds tab characters to delimit the columns...

How?

UPDATE `mytable` SET `myColumn` = TRIM(CHAR(9) FROM TRIM(`myColumn`));

Source: Stack Overflow - How to Remove Tabs

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What?
A quick article showing my MySQL statement when I want to remove all the accents from foreign characters and return the English equivalent.

Why?
A content management system (CMS) that I'm working on has just gone international and started including the names of places in other countries. This is nice but its search engine doesn't work properly as it thinks "riviere" is different to "rivière". We need to ensure that a search for any of these kind of words will return results of similarly typed/sounding words.

How?
Here's just a splurge of SQL but I use this often enough:

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What?
A quick article on how to populate a database column from another table using a string comparison.

Why?
I have several database tables which replicate country names and I would rather they all use the ccTLD two letter code. This article was written because it took me so long to work it out.

How?

UPDATE  `table_to_update` a
        INNER JOIN `table_to_read` b
            ON a.`CountryName` COLLATE utf8_general_ci LIKE b.`CountryName` COLLATE utf8_general_ci
SET     a.`ccTLD` = b.`ccTLD` 

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Applies to:

• MySQL Database v5.0.45
• MySQL Workbench v6.0.8.11354 build 833

What?
This is a quick article on how to get around the problem of backing up your MySQL database when attempting to "Data Export" using MySQL Workbench. This is not regarding the connection issue as I can connect to my database using MySQL Workbench (I have enabled the old authentication protocol). The error ONLY appears when I try to "data export" the database.

Why?
The quick solution for everyone else is to change/reset the password of the connecting database user, but herein lies the problem. When you read my workaround, you'll say that I haven't solved anything; but this is a production database I want to export for offline backup. I have to raise and log a formal change request and follow a workflow process in order to make a change on a live system to a service user account... Especially one used by the scripts to access the database-driven website.

How?

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What?
This article is to remind me how to create a blank weekly timesheet which reads the duration of events from a database and auto-completes your timesheet.

Why?
I'm being tasked to work with EPM (Microsoft Enterprise Project Management) more and more. Similar systems have popped out that support some form of time recording and activity logging. The example below however is within a LAMP/MySQL environment but the SQL basics are here to help me adapt it to whatever environment people keep throwing at me.

What I want:

ThisDate    ThisDay     StartTime  TimeOut  TimeIn  EndTime  TotalTimeToday TotalTimeWeek
----------- ----------- ---------- -------- ------- -------- -------------- -------------
2013-12-02  Monday      09:00      12:00    13:00   17:00    7:00           7:00
2013-12-03  Tuesday     08:45      12:00    13:30   17:45    7:30           14:30
2013-12-04  Wednesday   09:00      12:30    13:30   17:00    7:00           21:30
2013-12-05  Thursday    10:00      12:15    12:45   17:15    7:45           29:15
2013-12-06  Friday      07:00      12:00    13:00   16:30    8:30           37:45
2013-12-07  Saturday    -          -        -       -        0:00           37:45
2013-12-08  Sunday      03:00      04:00    -       -        4:00           41:45

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What?
Quick note on how to do this.

I was tasked with cleaning up an english database by replacing all special alphabets (ë to e) and non-alphanumeric symbols with URL friendly characters.

How?

-- return all records that contain non-alphanumeric characters
SELECT * FROM myTable WHERE myColumn NOT REGEXP '^[A-Za-z0-9]+$';

-- return all records that are non-alphanumeric but ignore underscores
SELECT * FROM myTable WHERE myColumn NOT REGEXP '^[A-Za-z0-9\\_]+$';

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