MySQL JSON Document Store

April 2, 2019

Introduction

MySQL is the most popular Open Source database!
An ACID (acronym standing for Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability) compliant relational database that allows you, among others, to manage your data with the powerful and proven SQL, to take care of your data integrity with transactions, foreign keys, …
But you already know that 🙂

JavaScript Objet Notation, better known as JSON, is a lightweight and very popular data-interchange format. Use for storing and exchanging data.
A JSON document is a standardized object that can represent structured data. And the structure is implicit in the document.
Anyway, I bet you know that too!

Started with MySQL 5.7.8, you can handle JSON documents in a “relational way”, using SQL queries and also storing them using the MySQL native JSON data type.
We also provides a large set of JSON functions.
I hope you were aware of that!

You should be interested in:

Note:

I would recommend you to have a closer look at JSON_TABLE function, that extract data from a JSON document and returns it as a relational table… It’s just amazing!

However MySQL 8.0 provides another way to handle JSON documents, actually in a “Not only SQL” (NoSQL) approach…
In other words, if you need/want to manage JSON documents (collections) in a non-relational manner, with CRUD (acronym for Create/Read/Update/Delete) operations then you can use MySQL 8.0!
Did you know that?

MySQL Document Store Architecture

Let’s have a quick overview of the architecture.

MySQL Document Store Architecture

  • X Plugin – The X Plugin enables MySQL to use the X Protocol and uses Connectors and the Shell to act as clients to the server.
  • X Protocol – The X Protocol is a new client protocol based on top of the Protobuf library, and works for both, CRUD and SQL operations.
  • X DevAPI – The X DevAPI is a new, modern, async developer API for CRUD and SQL operations on top of X Protocol. It introduces Collections as new Schema objects. Documents are stored in Collections and have their dedicated CRUD operation set.
  • MySQL Shell – The MySQL Shell is an interactive Javascript, Python, or SQL interface supporting development and administration for the MySQL Server. You can use the MySQL Shell to perform data queries and updates as well as various administration operations.
  • MySQL Connectors – Connectors that support the X Protocol and enable you to use X DevAPI in your chosen language (Node.jsPHPPythonJava.NETC++,…).

Write application using X DevAPI

As a disclaimer, I am not a developer, so sorry no fancy code in this blog post.
However the good news is that I can show you were you’ll be able to found the best MySQL developer resources ever 🙂 that is :

https://insidemysql.com/

And to start, I recommend to focus on the following articles:

And of course the newest articles as well.
Furthermore, another resource that would be useful to you is the

X DevAPI User Guide

Use Document Store with MySQL Shell

If you are a DBA, OPS and obviously a developer, the simplest way to use (or test) MySQL Document Store, is with MySQL Shell.

MySQL Shell is an integrated development & administration shell where all MySQL products will be available through a common scripting interface.
If you don’t know it yet, please download it.
Trust me you are going to love it !

MySQL Shell

MySQL Shell key features are :

  • Scripting for Javascript, Python, and SQL mode
  • Supports MySQL Standard and X Protocols
  • Document and Relational Models
  • CRUD Document and Relational APIs via scripting
  • Traditional Table, JSON, Tab Separated output results formats
  • Both Interactive and Batch operations

Note:

MySQL Shell is also a key component of MySQL InnoDB Cluster. In this context, it allows you to deploy and manager a MySQL Group Replication cluster.

See my MySQL InnoDB Cluster tutorial.

First steps with MySQL Shell

Let’s connect to the MySQL Server with MySQL Shell (mysqlsh)

We must be inside a X session in order to use MySQL as a document store. Luckily there is no extra step, because it’s the default in MySQL 8.0. Note that the default “X” port is 33060.
You can check that you are inside a X session thus using X protocol

If you are connected inside a classic session, you’ll get the following input (note “<ClassicSession instead of <Session”) :

You can know what is you X protocol port by checking mysqlx_port variable.
I’ll switch to the MySQL Shell SQL mode to execute my SQL command:

Then reconnect to the server using the right port (33060 by default) and you should be fine :

CRUD

We are going to create a schema (demo) where we will do our tests

Note:

The MySQL Shell default language is JavaScript. However, all the steps described in this article can also be done in Python.

e.g.

JS> session.createSchema(‘demo’)

Py> session.create_schema(‘demo’)

Create documents

Create a collection (my_coll1) insert the schema demo and insert documents :

Trying to add a non valid JSON document raise an error :

List collections

To get the list of collections belonging to the current schema use getCollections() :

Find documents

Display the content of a collection with find() :

Note:

Each document requires an identifier field called _id. The value of the _id field must be unique among all documents in the same collection.
MySQL server sets an _id value if the document does not contain the _id field.

Please read: Understanding Document IDs.

You can execute many operations on your document. One practical way to get the list of available functions is to press the <TAB> key, to ask for auto-completion, after the dot “.”
For example, type db.my_coll1. then press <TAB>twice, you’ll get the following result:

You can also use the awesome MySQL Shell built-in help (I strongly recommend my colleague Jesper‘s article) and please bookmark is blog.
Last but not least our documentations: X DevAPI User Guide, MySQL Shell JavaSCript API Reference & MySQL Shell Python API reference.

Modify documents

You’ll need the modify() function :

Remove content from documents

You can also modify the structure of a document by remove a key and its content with modify() and unset().

Remove documents

We are missing one last important operation, delete documents with remove()

You can also remove all documents in a collection with one command. To do so, use the remove(“true”) method without specifying any search condition.
Obviously it is usually not a good practice…

Import JSON dcouments

Let’s work with a bigger JSON collection.
MySQL Shell provide a very convenient tool, named importJson(), to easily import JSON documents inside your MySQL Server either in the form of collection or table.

You can find the JSON file source here.
Note that I had to do an extra step before import the data:
sed ‘s/}}},{“id”/}}} {“id”/g’ got_episodes.json.BAK > got_episodes.json

By the way you can import data from MongoDB to MySQL \o/

No more excuses to finally get rid of MongoDB 😉

Let’s do some queries…

Display 1 document

Looks like data relative to a famous TV show 🙂

All episodes from season 1

First episode of each season

CRUD Prepared Statements

A common pattern with document store datastores is to repeatedly execute the same (or similar) kind of simple queries (e.g. “id” based lookup).
These queries can be accelerated using prepared (CRUD) statements.

For example if your application often use the following query:

So it’s probably a good idea to use prepared statements.
First we need to prepare the query:

Then bind the value to the parameter :

Simply powerful!

Index

Indeed relevant indexes is a common practice to improve performances. MySQL Document Store allows you to index your keys inside the JSON document.

Add a composite Index on keys season AND episode.

The required: true option means that it’s mandatory for all documents to contains at least the keys number and season.
E.g.

Add an index on key summary (30 first characters)

Add a Unique Index on key id
Not the one generated by MySQL called _id and already indexed (primary key)

The unique: true option means that values of key id must be unique for each document inside the collection. i.e. no duplicate values.
E.g.

You can obviously drop an index, using dropIndex().
E.g. db.GoT_episodes.dropIndex(“idxSummary”)

Transactions

MySQL Document Store is full ACID, it relies on the proven InnoDB’s strength & robustness.

Yes, you get it right, We do care about your data!

You need the functions below:

Let’s see an example with a multi collection transactions that will be rollback.

Tadam!!!
We back in the past 🙂

Execute (complex) SQL queries

NoSQL + SQL = MySQL

From the MySQL server point of view, collections are tables as well, like regular tables.
And this is very powerful !!!

Powerful because that allow you, within the same datastore (MySQL), to do CRUD queries and SQL queries on the same dataset.
Powerful because that allow you, to have your OLTP CRUD workload and your analytics SQL workload at the same place.
So no need to transfer/sync/… data from 1 datastore to another anymore!!!

You can do SQL queries using sql() functions:

You can also do SQL queries just as you have done until now, using the rich set of MySQL JSON functions.
OK let’s have a closer look.

Remember this CRUD query?

Its SQL query alter ego is :

Let’s do some SQL queries…

Number of episodes by season

Episode statistics for each season

Statistics on the number of days between episodes

Note:

Hey buddy, aren’t Window Functions very cool?

More here and here.

Drop collections

Use dropCollection() :

Conclusion

Wow!
Probably one of my longest article, but I wanted to be sure to give you a large overview of MySQL Document Store (although not exhaustive) from a point of view of a non developer.


Now it is your turn to give it a try 🙂

NoSQL + SQL = MySQL

In order to go further

Some useful link:

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7 Responses to “MySQL JSON Document Store”

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