TheUsual for MySQL 5 & Up, PHP 5.5 & Up

Published under the Creative Commons Licence
by Artful Software Development artfulsoftware.com
Version 2.5.8, 15 July 2022

• Download
• Requirements
• Configure MySQL and PHP
• Install TheUsual
• Front end to manage connections to multiple servers
• Database for TheUsual's settings, saved queries, form plugins
• User interface
• Change history

TheUsual/PHP exists to provide a fast, free, user-friendly web browser viewing and maintenance interface for MySQL databases. It runs on your own computer under a web server like Apache or IIS, on a dedicated intranet or internet server, or on a remote hosting server (dedicated or shared) running MySQL 5 or up and PHP 5.5 or up.

There is one current version of TheUsual/PHP, for the mysqli PHP API. (The mysql PHP API is disappearing from PHP; the last version of TheUsual for the mysql PHP API was 1.90.)

TheUsual implements the Artful concept of TheUsual—a clean, efficient, intuitive web interface for doing the jobs you usually have to do to create, update, populate, maintain and query databases, their objects and tables and data.

• browse databases including their tables, data, objects
• add/edit/copy/delete interface for editable tables
• support for input form plugins 
• create edit save & run custom queries, optionally parameterised
• automatic master-detail browsing
• auto search-for-key-value input control  
• user-configurable pagination and sorting 
• support for stored routines
• database metadata browser with table maintenance commands including data Import, Export, Backup
• on-the-fly Area, Histogram, Line, Motion, Org/Tree, Pie, Scatter graphical charts

Chapter 12 of Get it Done with MySQL 5&Up, excerpted here, outlines the basic design and approach.

To download TheUsual/PHP, visit https://www.artfulsoftware.com/theusual.html and scroll to the bottom of the page.

TheUsual/PHP requires: 

• MySQL or MariaDB version 5 and up. The latest production or release-candidate version of MySQL or MariaDB is usually best.
• PHP 5.5 or later running in a web server that supports PHP, e.g., Apache or Internet Information Services (IIS).
• Your instance of PHP must be configured to communicate with MySQL via the mysqli interface.

Pre-5 PHP used MySQL the version 3.x client module. This is no longer supported.

The mysql PHP API is obsolete. The last upgrade of TheUsual/PHP for that API, theUsualPHPmysql.rar, was version 1.90. Use the mysqli API instead, and the version of theUsual for that API, theUsualPHPmysqli.rar.

PHP and MySQL authentication: Since v5.5, MySQL has supported authentication plugins, and version 8.0 has made caching sha2_password pluggable authentication the default, but ...

• MariaDB does not support caching_sha2_​password or the MySQL 8.0 default plugin,
• Few hosting providers offer MySQL 8.0, many offer only MariaDB,
• PHP versions before 7.1.16, and 7.2 versions before 7.2.4, set the MySQL system variable default_authentication_plugin to mysql_native_​password, so these PHP versions can't use caching_sha2_password,
• PHP 7.4 support for caching_sha2_​password and for the MySQL 8.0 default authentication plugin auth_plugin_​caching_sha2_​password remains incomplete,

Users of TheUsual are responsible for acquiring and remembering their MySQL login credentials. It's not in TheUsual's brief to intrude on MySQL user access management; TheUsual's job is to remember securely hashed passwords for one or more host/user pairs and make those hashes available for validation against a submitted login password. As of v2.5.0 it uses the PHP functions password_hash(), password_verify().

MySQL-PHP configuration has many moving parts. If you're not using one of the many package webdev installations (LAMP, WAMP, XAMPP &c), these are the best guides we know for getting them to work together:

Linux:

https://www.linuxhelp.net/guides/lamp/
https://hostlibrary.com/installing_apache_mysql_php_on_linux

Windows:

https://www.artfulsoftware.com/php_mysql_win.html

Windows with Apache web server:

https://forge.mysql.com/wiki/PhpFAQ

Windows with IIS

https://www.devarticles.com/c/a/Apache/Installing_PHP_under_Windows
https://www.devarticles.com/c/a/PHP/Installing-PHP-under-Windows-Further-Configuration-of-WAMP

Mac:

https://www.apachefriends.org/en/index.html

As of v2.5.0, installation has been streamlined.

Step 1: Unpack the archive. Create a folder named theusual off the Document Root of your web server. Document Root is usually something like /var/www,  /apache24/htdocs,  home/your_​site_name/public_html, or under IIS on Windows c:\inetpub\wwwroot. Into this new theusual folder, unpack theUsualPHPmysqli.rar preserving path info. That will yield...

ajax-loader.gif
artfulA.jpg
artfulA.png
calendar.css
calendar.js
download.php
phpinc.php
mysqlddl.php
mysqldel.php
mysqlins.php
mysqlupd.php
refresh.php
session_continue.php
theusual_start.php
theusual.php
theusual-funcs.php
upload.php
viewupd.php
theusualauth.php
theusualcall.php
theusual_start.php
includes/theusualcall.inc
includes/theusualinc.php
includes/theusual-login.php

In recent versions the archive included theusual.css, but Google and Microsoft browsers can misread CSS files in the presence of Javascript code, so with version 2.5.2, stylesheet code has been moved back into theusual.php.

Of files from the archive the following manage authentication ...

• theusualauth.php is a sign-in dialog to collect and verify login host, user and password values for TheUsual
• includes/theusualinc.php exists to hold an array of user@host => hashed_password values generated by the PHP function password_hash() to be inspected by function theusualaccess() in theusualauth.php
• theusual_start.php is called by theusualauth.php, as in Step 4 below. If authentication succeeds, it checks file availability, initialises startup settings, then invokes TheUsual. It can also be called directly, (i.e., with no login dialog) from your browser (Step 3 below); in this case TheUsual expects to find login host & user & password settings in the following file ...
• includes/theusual-login.php, a simple plain text script for setting session MySQL host, user, pswd values so they can be read directly by TheUsual in contexts where more security is not needed

• theusualcall.php, menu of multiple instances of MySQL and, optionally, of TheUsual
• includes/theusualcall.ini, host and path data for theusualcall.php

Step 2: Move the include files. If this is a new installation of TheUsual, or if your previous TheUsual version was pre-2.5.0, move the files in the unpacked includes installation folder into a folder that is in PHP's include_path, or to an includes folder outside the Document Root, e.g., to /var/includes if Document Root is /var/www/, to /home/your_site_​name/includes/ if Document Root is /home/your_site_​name/public_html, to /apache24/includes/ if Document Root is /apache24/htdocs/, and so on.

If this is an upgrade of TheUsual from version 2.5.0 or later, you can delete the unpacked includes files

Step 3: Simplest authentication. Most simply but least securely—e.g., if you are installing TheUsual on a private web server on your own well-secured development machine—you may want to forego a login dialog and write login specs directly into includes/theusual-login.php, e.g., ...

<?php
$_SESSION['host'] = getenv( "php_host" ) ? getenv( "php_host" ) : "localhost" ;
$_SESSION['user'] = getenv( "php_user" ) ? getenv( "php_user" ) : "myusername" ;
$_SESSION['pswd'] = getenv( "php_pswd" ) ? getenv( "php_pswd" ) : "mypassword" ;
?>

Step 4: More secure authentication. If you are installing TheUsual on a public web server, you do not want to be writing plaintext passwords anywhere on the server—you need better security than Step 3 provides. Visit https://php-password-hash-online-tool.herokuapp.com, click on PASSWORD HASH, enter your MySQL password, copy the result, and follow instructions at the top of includes/theusualinc.php to paste in the hash result along with your MySQL 'host@username' value. For multiple MySQL users, repeat for each user.

In your browser run YOUR_HOST_URL/theusual/theusualauth.php, bookmark the page, then login. You're up and running.

Alternatives: We're in the open source ecosystem so naturally you're free to replace step 3 or 4 with any other authentication scheme you please. If you're doing this, please remember ...

• don't write plaintext passwords to disk on a public or hackable server,
• the mysqli PHP API doesn't (yet?) support MySQL authentication plugins,
• MariaDB supports neither the MySQL 5.6/5.7/8.0 sha256_password authentication plugin nor the MySQL 8.0 caching_sha2_password authentication plugin,
• your customisation needs to generate $_SESSION['host'], $_SESSION['user'], and $_SESSION['pswd'] settings that TheUsual can use to connect to MySQL.

If you are running TheUsual on IIS:

1. Be sure to enable read-write sharing for IIS_IUSR for TheUsual's folders and subfolders.

2. Since Windows 7, IIS authentication is byzantine. If PHP scripts like TheUsual fail with an error like "You do not have permission to view this directory or page because of the access control list (ACL) configuration ...", from Start run inetmgr, click on the top level in the left navigation panel, select Authentication in the IIS middle panel, right-click on Anonymous Authentication and select Edit, and in the resulting Edit Anonymous Authentication Credentials dialog, click the Application pool identity radio button. Incredible, but there it is.

3. To allow imports bigger than 30MB, try this: select the top item in the left inetmgr navigation pane, click on Request Filtering in the middle pane under IIS, select Hiodden Segments, right click on Web.Config, from the context select Edit Feature Settings, and change Maximum Allowed Content Length to a value that suits your needs. Then restart IIS. If IIS doesn't allow big uploads, you will have to FTP or otherwise copy them directly into TheUsual's uploads folder.

The script theusualcall.php puts up dropdown menus for multiple installed instances of TheUsual and of available MySQL servers.

It uses the text configuration file includes/theusualcall.ini, which may have two kinds of configuration lines, one kind for instances of TheUsual and one for available instances of MySQL server ...

1. For each available installation of TheUsual: one line of comma-separated key=value pairs specifying name, group, host and path for one installation of TheUsual ...

• theusual = your choice of name for this instance of TheUsual, perhaps for example its version number and/or the name of the machine it's running on; this will be the name by which this instance of TheUsual is selected in the menu.
• group = your choice of name for the group to which this instance of TheUsual belongs; installations of TheUsual in a given group can access only MySQL database servers with the same group name (e.g., you couldn't run a local instance of TheUsual against a web MySQL instance on the same parameters you use for local instances)
• host = LAN machine name or URL for accessng this instance of TheUsual
• path = path at host to the PHP script that invokes this installation of TheUsual, typically either ...
  • /theusual/theusualauth.php to bring up a login dialog, or
  • a custom script you write to authenticate login credentials then pass them to /theusual/theusual_start.php

Example: Suppose you have two local installations of TheUsual, and one on a remote web site ...

• thelaptop/theusual
• thedesktop/php/theusual
• www.thewebsite.org/theusual

    theusual=thelaptop,  group=lan, host=thelaptop,              path=/theusual/theusualauth.php

    theusual=thedesktop, group=lan, host=thedesktop,             path=/theusual/theusualauth.php

    theusual=thewebsite, group=wan, host=https://thewebsite.com, path=/theusual/theusualauth.php

Attacks on web servers are getting smarter, so is browser security. Best practice now is to enable SSL on all web servers including one's own private and presumably secure development server; for all such servers, LAN and WAN, server host will begin with https://.

2. For each distinct MySQL user login, one line of comma-separated key=value pairs specifying the MySQL server name and its server group. Optionally, if the MySQL server is entirely private and secure, this line can also have login username and password, though that's not recommended ...

• mysql = the name of this MySQL server; if it is on your LAN, this is that machine's name; if on the web, it is the MySQL server host name specified by the hosting provider; this is the naame that theusualcall.php will show for this instance of MySQL,/li>
• group = the name of the group to which this MySQL database server belongs; installations of TheUsual with a given group name can access only MySQL database servers with the same group name

    mysql=mylaptop,         group=lan

    mysql=mydesktop,        group=lan

    mysql=webprovider_name, group=thewebsite

Theusualcall.php ignores lines in theusualcall.ini that don't begin with 'theusual' or 'mysql'. See the sample includes/theusualcall.ini.

TheUsual maintains its metadata---settings, saved queries, input form plugins, non-transactional master-detail table relationships---in MySQL tables. TheUsual's startup script theusual_start.php stores the name of the database for these tables, default theusualsys, in a PHP session array element $_SESSION['sysdb'].

If the MySQL login you are using for TheUsual includes the Create Database privilege, you need do nothing to make this work---TheUsual will create the theusualsys database when it finds the metadata database missing.

(Until MySQL version 5.7, we could use 'sys' as the default name of the metadata database. MySQL 5.7 implemented its own sys database, so we changed the default name to 'system'. MySQL 8.0.3 made 'system' a reserved word, so since theUsual v2.18, the name is what it should have been all along, theusualsys.)

If the MySQL login you are using for TheUsual doesn't include the Create Database privilege---as on a shared hosting account where databases must be created in other software like cPanel---you'll need to create a database for TheUsual to use for these tables, then edit theusual_start.php to set $_SESSION['sysdb'] to the name of your metadata database.

If you have access to just one database and no privileges to create other databases, just set $_SESSION['sysdb'] in theusual_start.php to the name of your one database; TheUsual will create and maintain your metadata tables in your one database.

Any number of the same or different instances of TheUsual can run simultaneously in browser tabs, because TheUsual implements the session setup described in Chapter 12 of Get It Done With MySQL 5&6 and under MySQL and PHP | Basics | Session setup at https://artfulsoftware.com/infotree/mysqltips.php

On load, TheUsual offers a list of databases for which you have privileges. Once you select a database, TheUsual puts up a dropdown table selection list, and a saved queries dropdown for the current database if the theusualsys database has been initialised and if there are saved queries.

Once you click the Select button for a choice from the Table dropdown, TheUsual brings up a paged datagrid display of that table with order-selectable headers, and a navigation bar permitting selection of rows-per-page and the Top/Previous/Next/Bottom page of data. When the table is editable (that is, it has a primary or unique key), each row has prompts for adding, editing, adding using a copy of ther current row, or deleting.

If the selected table uses an ACID-compliant storage engine like InnoDB, and if other tables in the current database have foreign keys referencing that table, the navigation bar offers a dropdown detail table selector. If you select a detail table from that dropdown, TheUsual displays a second grid with detail rows matching the current row of the master table. If that child table is in turn the pmaster or arent of another table, Go commands in that grid select that detail table as the master table in a refreshed page.

Clicking on the Metadata link brings up a table browser for the current schema with Analyze, Check, Export, GoTo, Optimize, Repair and Drop options. GoTo has the same effect as selecting that table or View from the Table/View dropdown. In v2.31 the SQL formatter function (originally from GitHub) was revamped to make it more useful for reading the vast amounts of interesting Stored Routine and View code that MySQL provides since v5.7 in its sys database:

Data display options in the navigation bar

Per page: A rows/page dropdown selector appears on the dashboard when the query is pageable. Possible values are 1,2,5,10,20,50,100,500,1000,2000,5000. To change these, edit $pagelens in theusual.php.

Prev, Top, Next, Last: Display the previous, top, next or last <per page> rows returned by the current query. These prompts default to arrow icons but can be set to Top Prv Nxt Bot in Settings.

Detail table: This is a dropdown selection list of ACID-compliant tables in the currently selected database with a foreign key referencing the currently selected table. Up to version 1.89, TheUsual could display one master-detail table relationship. Since version 2.00 (mysqli version only), there is no limit to the number of cascading master-detail relationships.

Master-detail relationships without declared foreign keys: Some MySQL and MariaDB storage engines do not support foreign keys, yet management of data in such tables often needs master-detail logic. TheUsual helps with this by letting you add, to the above child tables list, master-detail table relationships without declared foreign keys. It does this by storing such table relationship specifications in a theusualfks table in the metadata database.

If TheUsual does not find such a table, it creates it. You can use TheUsual (or any other MySQL client) to add rows to this table specifying master-detail (parent-child) table relationships.

TheUsual documents master-detail relatonships in the same way MySQL information_schema documents foreign keys. To create a non-InnoDB master-detail relation for a pair of tables, insert rows in the theusualfks table where the Referenced schema, table and column document the parent table, and the remaining three columns document the child table, as in this example for a MyISAM version of the MySQL world database ...

When you browse world.country in TheUsual, you can choose city or countrylanguage as a child table, and TheUsual will auto-generate dropdown picklists for the relevant foreign keys...

Beware that TheUsual does not (yet) validate parent-child entries in theusualfks table; it just tries to execute them as if they were real foreign keys, and reports an error if the specification is incorrect.

If the detail table itself has a detail table, the leftmost column of each detail row shows, in addition to Edit, Ins, Copy and Del options, a Go option that makes the current detail table the master table in the next browse, which will be of the page containing the selected row. Use Go to daisy-chain down any number of cascading master-detail table pairs.

Goto, Edit, Insert, Copy, Deletion

The navigation bar GoTo control goes to the first page on which it finds a value matching a column search value the user has entered. It's enabled for a base table or a View selected from the Table dropdown. Up to v2.01, it supports primary key searches. Since v2.02, select a column from the dropdown that appears, then enter a value to search for: if TheUsual finds a first instance of that column value on the current ordering, it will display that page. Since v2.03, if the column value you enter contains the '%' wildcard, TheUsual will look for a column value LIKE your search value. (To find multiple instances of a value, use Query, with parameters if desired (see below), to add a WHERE condition to the current query.)

When the table has a primary or unique key, each row offers options to Edit, Ins(ert), Copy or Del(ete) that row. Clicking on Edit puts the current row in edit mode, clicking on Ins brings up a new row for editing, and clicking on Copy brings up a new row which is a copy of the current row for editing. Finish an Edit, Ins or Copy cycle by clicking Save or Cancel.

As of v2.36, the Settings page has an item specifyng the number of columns a table must have to switch the format of the Edit/Ins/Copy form from in-table rowwise horizontal to vertical showing just one row. The default is 5. If you set it to 0, the Edit/Ins/Copy format will always show just one row or record vertically. If you set it to a number greater than the greatest number of columns you have in a table, the Edit/Ins/Copy form format will always be in-table rowwise horizontal.

Automatic foreign key lookup dropdowns: Since v1.57, during row edits, for columns that are foreign keys in ACID-compliant tables, and also for TheUsual's user-defined foreign keys, TheUsual automatically puts up a dropdown for selection of a key value from the referenced table. In that dropdown, beside the key column, it also displays a (VAR)CHAR description column, if it can find one. You can tell TheUsual what description column to use if you enabled TheUsual's user-defined foreign keys: edit the theusualfks table in the database specified by $_SESSION['sysdb'] = 'admin', and in the row for that foreign key, set the value of the column named referenced_desc_column to the desired SELECT expression (beware: TheUsual doesn't verify your syntax!).

Plugins for forms

Version 1.85 introduced input form plugins. This feature needs the theusualsys theusualplugins table.

Install an input form plugin by adding a row to that table specifying coltype, onfocus, jsfile and cssfile, and optionally specify script and onblur.

Coltype may be DECIMAL, TINYINT, SMALLINT, INTEGER, FLOAT, DOUBLE, BIGINT, MEDIUMINT, TIMESTAMP, DATE, TIME, DATETIME, YEAR, DATE, BIT, DECIMAL, ENUM, SET, TINYBLOB, MEDIUMBLOB, LONGBLOB, BLOB, VARCHAR, CHAR, or GEOMETRY; onfocus specifies onfocus code; cssfile and jsfile specify CSS and Javascript files which TheUsual must load for the plugin; script specifies a javascript file in addition to jsfile, if any, to load in the input form; and onblur speciies required onblur code if any.

As a demonstration example and as a convenience, if the theusualplugins table is empty and if TheUsual can find the files calendar.js and calendar.css in the current folder, it installs a calendar popup plugin for date inputs by creating and populating a theusualplugins row for it. To import some other plugin, bring up the theusualplugins table in TheUsual, add and populate a row.

Views, Saved Queries

MySQL since 5.0 implements Views, so theUsual/PHP treats Views as tables. To create a View, run a CREATE VIEW statement as a custom query. To execute a View, select it from the Tables dropdown.

But MySQL Views have their limitations. They tend to be slow; indeed executing queries retrieved from a saved queries table is up to twice as fast as executing a View that invokes the query. And before MySQL version 5.7.7, Views may not have FROM clause subqueries, which multi-table queries and reports often need.

So a Query option in the navigation bar brings up an edit window in which you can create a custom query. Its execution module can handle multiquery scripts, so it can be used not just to run queries in the conventional sense, but also to run SQL script jobs (less than about 250KB of query text; see Big query scripts below for how to run larger import scripts).

Such queries can be saved so long as theUsual has been able to create a saved queries table ...

  CREATE TABLE theusualviews (
    name VARCHAR(64) PRIMARY KEY DEFAULT '',
    db VARCHAR(64) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
    User VARCHAR(16) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
    Host VARCHAR(64) NOT NULL DEFAULT '%',
    qry VARCHAR(8192) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
    changed TIMESTAMP
  );

Of course your query scripts can include CREATE PROCEDURE | FUNCTION | TRIGGER SQL, for ehich, if the routine consists of multiple statements, you'll need to specify an alternative DELIMITER, e.g.,...

    DELIMITER go
    CREATE PROCEDURE...
    BEGIN
    ... code ...
    END;
    go
    DELIMITER ;

Since v2.5.3, TheUsual suppresses display of query SQL when it's executed if query code includes the comment /* theusual_suppress_query_text */.

Multi-query results: The mysqliAPI supports multiple resultsets, so TheUsual shows them all even when they're from a stored procedure call in a multi-query script.

To manage your saved queries, select the database where it is, then select theusualviews from the Tables dropdown, browse and edit the saved queries table as you would for any other table. For editing of non-trivial queries it's usually much more efficient to copy to your preferred text editor, edit the query script there, then paste back into theUsual's interface for the saved queries table.

Runtime query parameters: As of v2.36, the Custom Query module supports query parameters which the user fills in at runtime before the query executes. Mark such parameters with the string [theusual_query_param] including the surrounding square brackets. For example, if you often need to search a documents table items( id int, author varchar(128), txt text ) for entries with text containing a certain word or character sequence, you could save a custom query ...

  select * from items where txt like '%[theusual_query_param]%';

Load Data Infile: Since version 2.47 TheUsual has a user-friendly wrapper for Load Data Infile queries. It's invoked both for standalone Load Data queries and for Load Data queries occurring in multi-query scripts.

The wrapper supports runtime query parameters so, for example, if a query begins with...

    LOAD DATA INFILE '[theusual_infile_param]' INTO ...

When a Load Data query runs against an InnoDB table, TheUsual runs the query asynchronously so during execution it can report the InnoDB insert count by polling Show Engine InnoDB Status at intervals on another connection; by default it spits out a reporting line for each chunk of 10M bytes. With transactional and non-transactional tables alike, it reports warnings and errors.

Big query scripts, Import

Do not try to send scripts with more than about 0.25MB of SQL text through Query. The custom query module is meant for scripts that are small enough to be meaningfully interactive and which may display SELECT results; it bogs down with more than 250 KB of input, and depending on the browser, can grind to a halt near 1MB.

For query scripts > 200KB in length use the Import command in the navigation bar. The import module can process 30MB of SQL commands on ordinary hardware in a few seconds. The Import option brings up a form where the user may ...

• choose a SQL script file to upload from the current computer, or
• open such a file that's already in an uploads subfolder of TheUsual's current working directory on the server.

The Import module creates its uploads folder if it does not exist, logs file uploads to theusual_uploads.txt, and logs upload errors to theusual_uploads.err. If the import file is too big to be uploaded through the browser (e.g., the IIS 7.5 limit is 30MB unzipped, and difficult to change), you'll need to FTP or otherwise copy the SQL command file directly into the uploads folder.

The module can handle files that contain SQL text; it can also handle zip, gzip, bzip2 and rar SQL archives. Most PHP installations support zip and gzip. Bzip2 needs PHP configuration using --with-bz2. (The PECL rar module was unstable in PHP 5.2 through 5.4---if you find a rar plugin that works with those PHP versions, please let us know). The import form also sets sql mode, character set, file deletion policy, and whether to try to determine that the file actually contains SQL before executing any commands from it.

Beware that several php.ini settings govern import/download file size and script execution time: edit php.ini, or invoke ini_set(), to set memory_limit, max_file_uploads, max_execution_time and max_input_time to limits that accommodate your largest and longest imports, and post_max_size and upload_max_filesize to zero if you can live with no limits, or to values you can live with.

The internet wasn't designed to display results of long batch jobs in real time. The MySQL client program isn't so good at the job either: results fly by faster than they can be read. The Import module is meant to handle potentially huge Inserts, so it shows just the first 80 characters of each SQL command it executes, along with the result. Even with that, screen output may be massive. How will a web browser respond?

Browsers do their own output buffering. We've no control at that level.

Under Apache, output_buffering in php.ini is determinative; it defaults to 4KB, so theUsual uses flush commands keep the user informed about how execution is proceeding.

But under IIS, screen output is usually held back until script execution completes. A Microsoft engineer offered this lame explanation: "For performance reasons and interoperability with some ASP.NET features ... we entirely buffer responses < 1MB and then send them at once." In IIS 7.5 it's actually 4MB. A 30 MB SQL script may take a minute or more to execute. Leaving the user uninformed for that long is rude, but IIS Manager offers no access to the controlling variable. A recommended workaround for this bit of IIS stupidity is first, in the left panel of IIS Manager, create an IIS "web site" forTheUsual, called, say, theUsual_mysqli; second, in the central IIS Manager panel find the name of the PHP engine--say it's PHP52_via_FastCGI; then finally, run this command ...

%windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd set config "theUsual_mysqli" /section:handlers /commitPath:apphost -[name='PHP52_via_FastCGI'].ResponseBufferLimit:0

Charts

A Chart prompt appears on the dashboard if TheUsual can match the data in the current datagrid to a type of chart it knows how to draw. TheUsual can now display, on the fly, nine kinds of Google Visualisation API charts—Area, Histogram, Line, Smoothed Line, Motion, Org (Tree), Pie, Pie with Percentages, and Scatter. These charts can use [VAR]CHAR, numeric and DATE values; BLOB, TEXT, ENUM and SET values are ignored. When customising queries for these charts, remember that MySQL functions like FORMAT() return strings; to make strings usable as numeric values for a chart, use CAST( FORMAT(...) AS DECIMAL[...]).

• Area chart: An area chart colours the space between the value line and the next lowest value line, or in the case of the bottom line, the x-axis. An area chart is available for the current query if its first result column returns a string, date or numeric value, and if there is at least one additional numeric result column.
  
  
• Histogram: Added in 2.10. The first column found in the query is distributed along the x-axis. Following numeric columns are scaled up the y-axis.
  
  
• Line and LinePlus charts: These plot y-axis value changes against x-axis values. The simple line chart displays raw values; the "Line plus" chart displays moving averages. Line charts are available for the current query if its first result column returns a string value, and if there is at least one additional numeric result column. LinePlus is a smoothed line plot.
  
  
• Motion chart: Invented by Hans Rosling, a motion chart makes a mini-movie of change over time, with many user-settable runtime options. A minimum motion chart needs a query result with a first string column; a second column that is a year integer, a date, a string specifying year quarters in the format YYYYQn, or a string specifying year weeks in YYYYWnn format; and at least one numeric result column. See the example below.
  
  
• Org/Tree chart: Draw an edge list tree. It requires at least two table columns, one for child values, one for parent values. Before v1.85, the first column must be the child column and the second column must be the parent column; since v1.85, the columns may be in parent-child or child-parent order. Each distinct parent column value must occur exactly once in the child column, and each child column except the root node should have exactly one parent (otherwise, the hierarchy is not a tree). An optional third string column can specify tooltip text.
  
  
• Pie charts: A pie chart needs a query result with a leading string column and a numeric column. "Pie plus" adds display of percentage values .
  
  
• Scatter chart: Ths needs two or more numeric columns. The first is plotted on the x-axis, and the others are colour-coded on the y-axis.
  

To draw a chart, TheUsual has to write out the data to be charted in a format that the Google Visualization engine can understand, so charts work best with aggregating queries that keep down the rowcount. Area charts, Histograms and Scatter charts can handle up to 10k rows; Org charts can handle 5k rows but are best with a few hundred at most; Line charts can handle 2k rows. Pie charts become unreadable with much more than a dozen rows, though the module will accept 50.

Here is a simple GNP-By-Continent query on the world database:

And here is an image of a minimum motion chart in its final state. All we had to do was ...

1. Import a column of historical per-country Democracy scores into the world database,
2. Run a query in TheUsual grouping the new column by decade against and the country.continent column,
3. Select Motion from the Chart dropdown in TheUsual, then click the Trails checkboxes and the Play button:

    select floor(population/100000)*100000 as 'Population Band', count(*) as Size
    from world.city
    where countrycode='GBR'
    group by 1;

• a string or date/time/timestamp or numeric column to serve as the per-row key (Country code in the example)
• the next two numeric columns for the X and Y axes respectively (Gini Coefficient and Homicides/100k in the example)
• the next string or numeric column found is mapped groupwise to bubble colours (Region in the example)
• a last numeric column (Population in the example).

Here's the data for the example ...

        ['AUT', 0.297, 0.66, 'Western Europe', 8091800],
        ['BEL', 0.251, 1.95, 'Western Europe', 10239000],
        ['CAN', 0.303, 1.76, 'North America', 33739900],
        ['CHE', 0.331, 0.54, 'Western Europe',7 160400],
        ['DEU', 0.319, 0.95, 'Western Europe', 82164700],
        ['DNK', 0.253, 1.01, 'Nordic Countries', 5330000],
        ['ESP', 0.343, 0.62, 'Southern Europe', 39441700],
        ['FRA', 0.299, 1.20, 'Western Europe', 59225700],
        ['GBR', 0.350, 1.20, 'British Islands', 59623400],
        ['ISR', 0.389, 1.36, 'Middle East', 6217000],
        ['ITA', 0.359, 0.67, 'Southern Europe', 57680000],
        ['NLD', 0.268, 0.55, 'Western Europe', 15864000],
        ['NOR', 0.249, 0.47, 'Nordic Countries', 4478500],
        ['RUS', 0.375, 8.21, 'Eastern Europe', 146934000],
        ['USA', 0.480, 4.96, 'North America', 327000000]

Print: Version 1.44 introduced a Print option to send browsed data to the printer of your choice.

Refresh: If your most recent custom query added or dropped a database or table, use this option to refresh the Database and Table dropdown menus.

Exit: Exit.

Database metadata browser

The Metadata prompt in the navigation bar browses all objects in the currently selected database. Each base table and View gets a row with a GoTo option to browse it; base table rows also have Analyze, Check, Optimize, Repair, Drop options. Below base tables and Views, all stored routines including Triggers are listed with their source code. The Metadata page's navigation bar has Backup, Import, MySQL Error Log (since v2.49), Settings prompts.

MySQL Error Log: Since v2.49, this option displays the MySQL error log, most recent entries first. if the log is available to be read. Note that in some shared hosting sites, and in some organisations, the MySQL error log is not available to some users.

Settings Panel: Since v2.37, this panel supports custom settings for each theusual user. Access the form by clicking Metadata in the navigation bar for any database , then click on Settingsin the Metadata page's navigation bar.

Database Backup is available in the Metadata database administration browser. It assembles, then offers for download, a file of SQL commands to recreate the tables, views, data, stored routines and Triggers of the current database.

The Backup parameters panel offers specification of whether the backup script is to create and/or issue a Use command for the database, generate dump commands within a single transaction, generate commands to drop and recreate tables, strip definer clauses from DDL for stored routines and Views, display error and warning messages, and offer to compress and download the result:

If the database being backed up keeps its saved queries in theusualsys.theusualviews rather than in itself, the Backup Parameters panel also offers an option to generate code to update the target server's theusualsys.theusualviews table.

The backup module writes its file to the current web folder, offers to download the file to the client, logs the file operation, and when the downlaod completes, deletes the dump file if that option has been chosen. If option is declined or if download is declined or if it fails, the file stays on the server.

Under Apache this is routine. Under Windows and IIS, it can require two additional steps: make the server folder's security tab visible, then use the Security tab to enable writes to wwwroot. Open My Computer, click on Tools | Folder Options and then on the View tab. At the bottom of the list uncheck 'Use simple file sharing (Recommended)'. Now Windows Explorer shows the Security tab in the Properties context menu for every folder. In Windows Explorer, right-click on wwwroot, select the Security tab, select the Internet Guest Account ([username]/IUSR_[username]), check Write and Modify, and press OK.