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This will ensure that your database is compatible with the new version of MySQL, and will allow your database to support more characters, such as emojis.
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When upgrading to MySQL 8, it's a good idea to change your character set and collation to utf8mb4 and utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci, respectively. The ai indicates that it is using accent-insensitive collation, and the ci means that it is case-insensitive. The 0900 in the collation name indicates that it is using the Unicode 9.0 standard. utf8mb4 is a more robust version of utf8 that supports 4-byte characters. In MySQL 8, however, the default character set is utf8mb4, and the default collation is utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci. In MySQL 5.7, the default collation was utf8mb4_general_ci. In previous versions of MySQL, latin1 and utf8 (with 3-byte characters) were commonly used. The character set determines how characters are stored in the database, while the collation determines how characters are compared. MySQL 8 has changed how character sets and collations work. If you are running your own database server, you can use the mysqldump command to create a backup of your database. If you are using a cloud service like Amazon RDS, you can use the automated backup feature to create a snapshot of your database. Many seasoned IT pros have not-so-fond memories of restoring a database from a backup only to find that it was corrupted or not backing up what they thought it was. Furthermore, you should ensure that your backup works. Upgrading MySQL versions with no downtimeīefore you upgrade, you should make sure that you have a backup of your database.This article will cover many of the things that you should look out for when upgrading an existing database from MySQL 5.7 to 8 and walks you through the process of changing your database to be compatible with the new version. Fortunately, this process is usually pretty straightforward, but there are several changes you may have to make.
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You'll get several new features that give you performance improvements and security enhancements, so it is important that you do this soon - especially with the imminent end-of-life of MySQL 5.7, which means there will be no further security updates. If you’re still running a database on MySQL 5.7, it’s time to seriously consider upgrading. But Oracle has been phasing out MySQL 5.7 support for various platforms over the past few years and end of life for MySQL 5.7 is slated for October 2023. MySQL 5 had a lengthy run from its release in 2005, and thus many organizations still have databases that were built on 5.x. Although MySQL 8 was released back in 2018, a significant share of MySQL servers out there are still running MySQL 5.x.
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