Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with mysql

Best practices for benchmarking and profiling!

Kwine — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 06:42:13 -0800

Help me develop a performance and concurrency testing and improvement plan for an ecommerce site. IANA DBA, but "Trial by fire is one of the best career paths." My company is developing an ecommerce site that may have up to 50,000 visitors/day when W-2 forms are released in mid-February, but significantly less traffic for the rest of the year-perhaps a few thousand per day when their client companies have payday. My experience (read: the companies experience) is limited to mom and pop sites that are lucky to receive that much traffic in a month. It's a Magento site (php/mysql, fairly resource intensive).

We currently host a few sites on the Rackspace cloud (including some Magento sites), which we are comfortable with after trying a couple of other Magento hosting options, but the cloud limits our configuration control to a .htaccess file, limits our log access, etc. To get more control, I have a virtual dedicated server set up on Rackspace, running a fresh CentOS image (chosen because the documentation for setting up magento on it is better than the other options); I'm going to install php and mysql and move the development site over to it today. (The dev site is waiting for a front end redesign, but is otherwise finished). This server has 256 MB RAM and a 10GB hard drive; it can be resized (with some down time) all the way up to 15872 MB and 620 GB, at additional cost/hour. My rough plan:

1) In a planned, organized, unbiased way, benchmark and profile the performance of the site at the current server size. I need the most help with this. I've read the O'Reilly "High Performance MySQL" book, which was somewhat helpful; I've toyed with ab, and poked at some of the other possible benchmark/profiling mentioned in there, but it seemed like the time required to get up to speed on the more sophisticated options might be too much for this project. I'm aware of the optimization chapter in the MySQL manual, but I haven't looked at it yet. I run OS X 10.5 and Windows 7. Budget is limited: cheap options are good, free is better. I also don't want this to consume my life: we have many other projects in the hopper. I want to think it through in a confident, measured way, and not be having panic attacks on February 10th.
2) Modify server settings and configuration. I DON'T want to be in the business of modifying Magento's core code, potentially putting us out of sync with future upgrades, so things like optimizing individual SQL queries are out.
3) If performance remains unacceptable, resize the server and repeat.

So I guess the main questions are as follows: Is this rough sketch of a plan reasonable? Which tools should I use to benchmark and profile? I could use some guidelines about what constitutes "acceptable performance" as well (I know this is in some sense a ridiculous, hopelessly idiosyncratic question). What am I not thinking of? Our target launch date for this site is January 2nd, but as stated above, the big performance requirements don't arrive for six weeks or so after that. Thanks!

How to automate backups on my ftp server?

stupidsexyFlanders — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 12:29:34 -0800

I have some wordpress sites hosted at bluehost that I want to keep backed up. Can you help me automate this? Detailed needs inside. What I've been doing is going to the bluehost control panel every few weeks and manually downloading, first, all the files on the ftp server. Then I'm separately downloading all the dbs. Then I'm throwing them all in a folder on my local machine and have Carbonite back them up remotely. I keep five backup sets, and delete the oldest when I add a new one.

I would like to automate this 100% if possible -- maybe have some kind of script that every week zips up the backups into a one big file on the ftp server, which I can then use SynchBack Pro to mirror to my local HD on a regular basis?

The solution would have to compress all the dbs and a defined portion of the ftp file structure into one file named 120509.* (itself inside a folder called /backups). The following week, same exact thing, except the files are compressed into 121209.*, etc. Each week it should look in /backups for a file named with a date older than 5 weeks and delete it.

Then I would use Synchback every week to pull down the contents of /backups on the ftp server to my local drive, which I will tell Carbonite to pull up remotely.

What do I do to automate the compressing and saving and sequential naming and date-based deleting on the ftp server?

I've never used cron or SSH and only done super basic stuff using phpmysql. I've read through these two askmes and while they did include code snippets that seemed like what I needed, I don't know what to do with them or how to modify them to do what I specifically need. So speak very slowly. Thanks!

Help me recover a deleted MySQL database on osx

special-k — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 10:19:16 -0800

Where does MySQL store actual data in Snow Leopard? How would I retrieve a deleted database from a Time Machine backup? MySQL was crashing repeatedly on my Snow Leopard. On the advice of an Apple genius, I nuked the existing install and all its associated directories. I didn't worry much because I do database stuff on my work computer and only keep copies on my laptop.

Turns out that there was one particular database [now nuked] that I spent a whole week cleaning up on my laptop. The desktop only has a really old version of this particular database.

I have regular time machine backups. How do I pluck this database out and restore it?
I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get to the data without going through mysql. Someone suggested looking in /usr/local/mysql/data

I can get to the mysql directory but have no permission to enter the data directory. I could recreate much of this work but it will take forever and I'd rather not. Can someone help?

Please hope me generate a custom report from a Wordpress database

jbickers — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:39:27 -0800

PHP/MySQL gurus: Please help me get data out of Wordpress in a really specific fashion. So I need to get a custom report out of our Wordpress database, from a very specific range of dates/times, and in a specific format. I need to be able to specify start and end date/times, and get back a comma-delimited file with this data for all posts in the range:

Date, time, post title

That's it. It would be nice if this were somehow made into a plugin with drop-down menus for the date range, but this is a "we need it right now" situation with zero budget for coders.

So, what's the easiest way to do it? I'm thinking a PHP page that fetches and retrieves the data and outputs it to the browser. But I might be missing some solution that is much easier and more elegant. Also, I have no idea how to code such a page, and have zero confidence with the MySQL command line. Can you help, por favor?

What interesting statistical information can I dig out of this medical billing data?

neilkod — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:37:28 -0800

What interesting statistical information can I dig out of this medical billing data? I have 2000 rows of medical billing information (mysql) with the following attributes. I've normalized the data and here is a very simple description:

patient:
id
dob
city/state/zip
primary insurance provider
secondary insurance provider

provider:
id

procedure:
procedure id/code

patient_procedure:(fk to patient & provider & procedure)
procedure date
billed amount

Unfortunately, the data only spans one month so I can't provide anything interesting across a date dimension beyond aggregating certain measures by weekday.

I've already produced a lot of information such as
% of patients with no secondary insurance
avg age for procedure
top-5 most frequently occurring procedures with large avg cost
billing and frequency by zipcode
so on and so forth-measure X across dimension Y

I'm looking for suggestions for some deeper analysis than the many SQL aggregates that I've performed.

Does php fork standalone mysql queries or wait for them?

twine42 — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 07:21:04 -0800

How does PHP handle mysql requests (in regard to time and 'forking') A piece of PHP code does a mysql INSERT. Assuming that there are no further mysql commands (ie, another SQL query or a request for the insert id), does PHP wait for the mysql to be completed before it continues with the rest of the PHP? Or does it wander on ahead?

The reason I ask, is that I have a server that is (occasionally) stacking a load of slow queries.

I've also got a system that does inserts a record, then redirects the browser to a different page which looks for a modified records.

I'm getting reports of a bug that could be a race condition, but I'd assumed that PHP was waiting for a response from mysql...

Mis-encoded Mayhem!

GJSchaller — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 09:25:02 -0800

Need help converting a mySQL database with Latin characters to UTF-8 I have an install of SMF that has its database set to UTF-8, and works for *most* posts. I recently migrated the tables out of one database, and into another, to separate it out from a Joomla install (They had both been in the same DB due to the limitations of the bridging component, but a newer bridge (JFusion) allows me to separate them, so I did for safety and security).

It appears that during the copy from one DB to the other, some of the characters in the posts became corrupt, or simply aren't showing up properly. After working with some developers, we've come to the conclusion that a handful of characters in the body of messages are actually NOT in UTF-8 format, but most likely in ISO-8859-1. You can see a sample post here:

http://www.knightrealms.com/forums/index.php?topic=50.0

Originally, the body of the post wasn't showing at all, but we were able to get it to show with an error (the [?] ) instead. I can confirm other posts, and other fields (such as signatures) are having the same issue, and when I look in the DB at them, they have characters such as curved quotes, Spanish characters, etc.

Is there a way to "clean" my DB to convert the wayward characters into UTF-8? I did a search on Metafilter and found this, but the links are all long gone. I did some googling and found this, but my PHP and mySQL-fu is not good enough to actually implement it - I can set up SMF and Joomla, but I'm not a developer / coder yet.

I tired running SMF's "Convert to UTF-8" function, and while this fixes the existing issues, it then introduces additional issues in the posts that were once fine. The issue appears to be record-specific.

Any help that can point me to a step-by-step process to clean / convert the problem characters would be appreciated!

How not to store plaintext passwords?

bottlebrushtree — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 09:56:51 -0800

Best practices for storing OracleDB/mysql/ldap/smtp/etc... system passwords for enterprise application integration use? I'm working with a vendor who currently is storing passwords in plain text in configuration files.

If you've ever configured Wordpress you are familiar with how your mysql password gets placed in plain text in the wp-config.php file.
This vendor is doing a similar thing for mysql, ldap, smtp, etc...

This has made some people uncomfortable.

I'd like some suggestions for best practices to minimize the use of passwords in plaintext (or trivially encoded text) in text configuration files.

These passwords are being used to drive external databases, ldap auth, smtp sending, etc...

Their Java / Tomcat application is expected to be running 24/7 as a Server. This particular instance will be on Windows Server 2003 though Linux is also supported.

It would be nice if it would be possible to have unattended restarting of the application without a user having to enter in a master password, but if that is the only solution we may be comfortable with it.

Some background:

The application uses LDAP to authenticate users (and hence has the LDAP system password in a configuration file)

The application stores its data in a SQL database (Oracle in this case, though they also support mysql. We have to stay on Oracle)

The application sends mail using SMTP

Thanks.

Serious help needed with Excel

TheBones — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 11:41:00 -0800

Crazy excel help needed... again. Every month I have a monotonous series of tasks to perform in excel and I have exhausted all of the possibilities I know of to make things easier- more details inside. I have 2 reports (report A and report B for my example) I pull every month, sometimes 2 or 3 times a month that I have to reconcile which takes a couple of hours a day for 1 excel file- I have about 10 to 20 a month and it keeps me from doing my real job.

We are talking around 68 columns with anywhere from 2000 rows+ of data.

Currently, my workflow is such:

Pull reports A and B and add them to the same workbook as different worksheets.

Create a new worksheet, which I use to create a working copy of the combined data.

Delete full rows of data in the working copy based on the values of one column of cells:
This is based on dates, so anything after say 01/01/2006 gets moved into a separate worksheet named "deleted data."

Use vlookup to pull a column of data from worksheet B into the working copy worksheet and then with the data pulled in, concatanate it with another column of data that is already existing in the working copy.

Use vlookup to pull in another column of data from worksheet B to the working worksheet.

There is alot of repetitive work done with find and replace and vlookup with different values.

My questions are as follows:

Can I create macros for these repetitive tasks so that I can say all text A in column c gets changed to new text, and all text b in column c gets changed to new text without doing a find and replace for all variables. There are about 12 columns with 4 different types of data that need to be changed in each column to something new.

Can macros even handle what I am asking of excel, or are they too rigid to effectively manipulate all the data I need changed.

Am I using the right program, or should I be looking at a local copy of a mysql database with a GUI (as I'm not that good of a programmer).

Should I use some other database, such as bento, filemaker pro or even access?

Or, am I just destined to use excel in the same workflows over and over again, pushing that boulder up the hill to have it roll back down again.

Please point me in the right direction (websites with tutorials that monkeys could follow) as I'm not very good with VBA and don't know very much about databases besides the fact that they can hold data and import cvs files- my knowledge base is sad, I know.

Turn on, tune in, log out?

telegraph — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 12:27:55 -0800

Webdev filter: What tools can I use to avoid developing a registration/log-in feature from scratch? I'm an amateur web developer -- I took a few programming classes in college (Java), know HTML and CSS pretty well, and can get by in PHP and SQL, albeit while checking references constantly. I'm trying to build what I think should be a pretty simple web application: the nuts and bolts of it are that it should allow member registration and login/out, and while the user is logged in, s/he can input numerical data, as well as view some statistical juggling of that data.

The data entry bit I feel fairly confident that I can do using PHP/MySQL. I've written a rudimentary registration and login system (with an email confirmation message, etc), but I can tell that it needs a lot more features and even though I am mostly n00b I can think of ways it could be compromised -- if at all possible I'd prefer to just use code that is already written and known to be fairly stable.

Is there a pre-built, standard kind of thing (I don't even know what the proper word to call it is) I can use for this? I think that Ruby on Rails could be used here, but my attempts at teaching myself how to use it have been kind of futile, and I don't really need all of the version control and other features like that. I'd like to keep this really really simple, at least for now.

As you can see I'm not very experienced and don't really know the proper terms are, so let me know if I need to clarify anything. While I'd like to learn other languages in the future, my goal is to get this thing up and running so I'd prefer advice that presupposes PHP use as opposed to telling me to go learn Python (though I guess I understand if that's the only option). Thanks.

Automatic MySQL migration

fightorflight — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 08:06:41 -0800

How can I automate the migration of an existing MySQL database to a newer schema? I have two MySQL databases which started out with a common schema, but while one has evolved the other has remained frozen. The changes are all either modifications to a column's datatypes, or the adding or dropping of tables and columns -- no columns are renamed, and it's purely one-way so no merging is required.

I can get the schema for both databases with mysqldump -d, and a diff shows up clearly the changes that need to be made to the first DB. It's just that there are a lot of them, and writing the script to ALTER all the tables by hand will be a chore and error-prone.

Is there some of way of automating this? Ideally some tool that allows me to upload both schemas and spits out a script.

MySQL to webpage

kewlio — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:25:03 -0800

What is the easiest way to share data from MySql to a web page on Windows I'm thinking something related to Windows web server IIS with some kind of plugin or asp?

3-5 days and good programming skills. I wanna build something cool!

cgg — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 13:37:11 -0800

I have 3-5 days (starting tomorrow!) in which I'm off from work, and have really nothing planned. As a developer geek in a crappy economy, I'm looking at looming unemployment and/or the start of a freelance career in the very near future. I want to this time making "something" that I can use in my portfolio to show potential employers/clients. What on earth can I build? Ideas for sites are a dime a dozen, except for when I need one. I'd like to build something cool that I can show off. Trouble is, I'd like to get it out, at least v0.1, after only 3-5 days of work. All my ideas involve considerably more effort than that. And I at least want it to be somewhat fun and/or interesting and/or to teach me something new... I can write boring code at work.

So mefites -- what should I build? I know the LAMP stack pretty well, where the 'P' can be either PHP, Python or Perl (although right now PHP is my strongest language). I can thnk in SQL -- databases are not a problem. I have more than enough hosting and a good dev environment. I can learn things (APIs, etc) pretty quickly. Maybe something fun with Google Maps? A Facebook app? An entire site? I'm open to all and any ideas...

Yes, there are better uses for my time. I should be networking, yadda yadda, but this is my vacation and I don't wanna. :) I never get to write what I want to write anymore. Assume my resume is up to date and polished.

into a black hole

mwhybark — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 11:17:14 -0800

Any Cloudy Nights folks on MeFi? I am googling around in getting going with backyard astronomy and Cloudy Nights appears to be (or to have been) a decent resource, but it has been nothing but failed MySQL connections and php pathing errors since I started digging. Any info? Is it dead, Bones? I did find this older AskMe which includes a bunch of good info, btw.

http://ask.metafilter.com/13386/quality-astronomytelscope-websites

I thought WAMPserver was, like, for idiots. I feel like an idiot so why doesn't it work?

Foam Pants — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 11:49:39 -0800

I am following a tutorial on how to install WAMPserver and Wordpress on my Windows machine to kickstart my learning of CM systems and PHP. A crucial component won't install and I don't know nuthin' about how to fix the problem. I found This tutorial on installing and configuring WAMPserver, which is ideal for a dunderhead like myself who can barely compute. When I get to the part where they tell you to go to SQLitemanager, I realized that it wasn't in my WAMPserver menu. I have unistalled and reinstalled twice and it doesn't show up. I have tried to duplicate their instructions using a SQLite Manager plugin for Firefox but it isn't working. I have searched for evidence of other people having the same problem but came up empty-handed. I am at a loss to find a solution. Am I looking for the answers in the wrong places? This is being installed on a machine without windows server software.

How do I remotely access a mysql database with ssh on windows?

Fluffy654 — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 08:06:30 -0800

How do I remotely access a mysql database with ssh on windows? Please assume that I have virtually no idea about the above process. Although I can use various web languages, including mysql, I have so far only used them on my own machine. Now I wish to try and connect to a database hosted remotely.

I have checked around and found plenty of advice for linux but how do I accomplish this in Windows? What exactly do I type in and where exactly do I type it in to?

The more steps you give me, the better! Thanks! Also the database has already been set up to allow this connection.

Which forums do the best web programmers hang out at?

jackson5 — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:15:45 -0800

Which forums do the best web programmers hang out at? Long story short: I've got a web site that already does over 1 million pageviews per month. I've got a great idea to take it to the next level, but I'm looking for someone who can handle the coding and technical aspects in exchange for an equity stake.

I'm wanting to bring aboard a great programmer who doesn't necessarily need the work but will be motivated by the equity.

Which forums would you recommend I post on to find this person?

Also, if there's anyone interested here, let me know.

MySQL connection error

sailormouth — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 13:09:26 -0800

MySQL connection error. This is at my work. IT will create and setup a MySQL db then hand of backups and maintenance to you. They give you the dbname, username, password, and server it is on.

I went through this 5 years ago. Accessing it from command line is no problem, but a php file will give access denied to apache@localhost in browser. The IT fix back then was to add user apache@localhost, and then web pages could access the db.

I just had a new db setup, and I'm back to web pages being denied access. I explained this had happened before and how it was handled. The IT folks I dealt with before are no longer here, and the replacement is asking me why the web pages are using apache@localhost instead of what I was given. IT has not dealt with this before. I have asked for apache@localhost to be added as a user, but I do not know how to explain that the user/passw I was given is also being used.

How do I tell IT what is going on with web page access vs commandline access? Why do web pages show as apache@localhost? Is adding user apache@localhost the correct fix?

What programming language should I use for a Digg-like web site?

jackson5 — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 11:37:41 -0800

What programming language should I use for a Digg-like web site? I'm no web developer, but I already have a high traffic picture gallery which I want to turn into a digg-like picture voting site.

I'm going to hire a developer and would like your recommendations on which programming language I should target for the site?

My site currently does about 2 million pageviews per month already, so I expect the traffic to go up. The programming language should easily handle a lot of traffic on 1 dedicated server.

I keep hearing a lot about Ruby on Rails. I'm familiar with PHP/MySQL, but not sure if that is the best programming language for this project.

I also keep hearing a lot about cloud hosting. This sounds like a good option as well.

Basically, to sum up my question: I want to post a "programmer wanted" ad for this project. What should I be looking for from a developer?

Help me move four very large Wordpress sites.

jbickers — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 07:33:39 -0800

I need to move four large Wordpress sites from one host to another, and I'm scared at all the many ways it could go wrong. We currently have four websites hosted in our building. All are running Wordpress.

The company has made the decision to switch to an off-site hosting company, an account has been setup, etc., and I'm tasked with moving the sites to the new host.

Here's the rub: The people that originally set up our in-house box put all four sites in the same MySQL database, with different table prefixes. Rub #2: These are extremely large sites, several of which have upwards of 50,000 posts.

So, how do I go about moving/implementing this beast? Setting up WP and moving the themes and all that isn't a problem. But how do I best move the data? Do I use a backup/restore plugin, or will that not work given the fact that they're all four in the same DB? Is there a better, safer way of moving MySQL data from one place to another?

Database Schema design tool

twine42 — Fri, 15 May 2009 04:55:59 -0800

Can anyone recommend some software to help me draw database diagrams the way that I want to draw them...? I can find lots of freeware and open source tools that will lets me draw a box for to represent a table with a list of columns underneath it. They let me draw a line between tables, but they don't let me draw a line between the columns.

For example, if I have two tables...

Table1 is called "Company" has columns called cid, name, vatnumber.
Table2 is called "Employee" has columns called eid, cid, name, socialsecuritynumber.

I can find tools that will draw a diagram with a connection between Company and Employee, but I can't find one that draws a connection between Company.cid and Employee.cid

[The MySQL workbox thingie draws a connection between them, but doesn't actually show the line in the relevant location...]

Any suggestions...?

Help me be awesome in PHP/MySQL and make some user groups

isnotchicago — Fri, 01 May 2009 14:17:42 -0800

Building a comment system, and looking for good introduction to managing groups and users with PHP/MySQL, or a prerolled "user management system". Ultimately, I need to setup a system for people to register as users, join (or be assigned to) groups, make comments (that are linked to their accounts), and filter comments by criteria (e.g., only show comments by other people in the same group). But, presumably, the "user" stuff would be separate from the "comment" stuff? So...broadly speaking, I need to create users and groups, and then track what every user does.

I found PHP User Class (http://phpuserclass.com/), PHP Users (http://www.majordojo.com/php-users/), and a short Sitepoint article (http://www.sitepoint.com/article/users-php-sessions-mysql/) after some quick Google searching. Anyone have any experience with either of those scripts, or know of any others? Or, know good resources to help me brew my own?

(As for why I am not just using Wordpress or Drupal or etc.,etc.etc.:)
I am working on a site involving a huge repository of text files and the ability to comment on those files. (1) the text files already exist as individual files (versus existing in a database somewhere), and (2) comments need to be on a per-line basis (versus the file as a whole, which is how CMS's usually work). Of course, if, with this vague description, you know of something that might be useful, let me know.

Advice On Outsourcing Database Management

spicy_sockpuppet — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 12:58:53 -0800

Remote DBA services - has anyone used one of these for their business to outsource database administration? Could use some advice or references. Currently looking at a service like BlueWolf to handle database optimization, performance testing, monitoring and alerts, support, and basic on-going maintenance/tuning. I do not currently have and cannot afford an on-staff DBA or server admin. My servers are dedicated but unmanaged by the host so no support there. I have an urgent need to get some handle on this stuff so I can sleep a little better and concentrate on driving revenue.

Has anyone used this kind of outsourcing before? Is it more trouble than it's worth? Is it a life-saver? Is it a money pit? Looks like my first pass at a quote was 500/month, minimum 12 month contract.

SQL Query Question

Nothing — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 06:10:00 -0800

SQL query help. Given the (fictional but equivalent) table disk_status = computer_id:int, disk_id:int, datetime:datetime, temperature:float, rpm:int, I need to provide a table of disk status for a given computer_id, without knowing in advance how many disks there are. So if there were two disks for a particular computer, the result would have the header: datetime, disk_1_temperature, disk_1_rpm, disk_2_temperature, disk_2_rpm, disk_2_rpm Long story short (and continuing with the computer/disk example) in the past we only ever needed to track one disk per computer, and so we did not use a disk_id at all. When faced with multiple disks, I considered adding more columns (disk_2_temp, etc) but there may be many, and that seemed like a hack. Instead I added the disk_id column, but now I need a way to get the data out in the right format.

Currently I do two queries: one to determine which disks are available, and then I left join the disk_status table to itself once for each disk:

SELECT disk_1.*, disk2.*
FROM disk_status AS disk_1
LEFT JOIN disk_status AS disk_2
ON disk_2.computer_id=x
AND disk_2.disk_id=z
AND disk_2.datetime = disk_1.datetime
LEFT JOIN disk_status AS disk_3
...
WHERE disk_1.computer_id = x
AND disk_1.disk_id = y

This seems inefficient. It also fails if disk_1 does not report but disk_2 does (disk_2 gets left out too). Is there a better way? Or is there a better way to structure my table?

Copy-Down in SQL

rokusan — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 22:36:40 -0800

Is there a GUI SQL editor that emulates a spreadsheet-style "copy down"? If not, is there a technique I should learn? I seem to spend 10-15 mins a day touching up some mysql data in a huge remote CRM-type database (I don't have shell access) and I notice that I spend most of that time copy-pasting the same corrections down one column for 50 or 60 rows. (I do a select to find new stuff, eyeball it, and find that one of the records has the right info and the other fifty need to be made the same, or none are right and I need to change them all).

If I was using a spreadsheet like Excel, that would take 2 seconds (drag down a range, control-d duplicate), but I haven't found a GUI SQL editor that can do this, so I click-copy-paste-click for 15 mins. This is time-wastey and feels silly. There's got to be an easier way.

(I realize that technically the app would have to do 60 individual updates, but that would be behind the scenes while I move on to more fun parts of my day, right?)

So is there a GUI SQL app that emulates the "copy down" of spreadsheets? Or if I were more clueful, is there a stored statement or "macro" I could make in one of these things that would take the selected field in the current record and dupe it down down down? If so, kick me in the right direction: I'm no database geek but I'm not wholly useless technically, either. I can probably learn from a few examples. (15 mins a day times 200 days a year is enough time to be worth reading a book!)

I'd prefer OSX but I would use Windows or Linux for a few minutes per day if the right tool is out there. For OSX, I've tried out the official mysql client, RazorSQL, Navicat, SequelPro, and SQLgrinder. Some are better than others at the copy-paste and ad hoc correcting I do, but none have "duplicate down".

These seems simple enough (to my pretty little head) that I must be missing something.