MySQL Engineering

Acknowledgement: Shared by Peter Bamuhigire, techguypeter.com, +256 784 464178.

Use this parent skill as the active MySQL engineering entrypoint. It keeps routing narrow while preserving the older MySQL child skills as reference modules.

Use When

• Designing MySQL-backed features, schemas, migrations, indexes, keys, and query paths.
• Reviewing MySQL SQL correctness, transaction behaviour, locking assumptions, or data modelling choices.
• Implementing stored routines, generated columns, JSON usage, or application data-access conventions.

Do Not Use When

• The task is unrelated to this parent skill or is better handled by a narrower active parent named in the workflow.
• The request only needs a trivial answer and no reference module needs to be loaded.

Required Inputs

• Gather the concrete system, repository, environment, constraints, and deliverable before loading references.
• Identify which absorbed reference file is needed; do not load every migrated reference by default.

Workflow

1. Start with database-design-engineering for model, integrity, tenancy, migration, and access-pattern framing.
2. Load only the needed reference:
   • references/mysql-best-practices.md for MySQL defaults, constraints, engine choices, and safe conventions.
   • references/mysql-data-modeling.md for schema and relationship design.
   • references/mysql-advanced-sql.md for advanced query and SQL patterns.
3. Administration, performance, backup, restore, and incident work also route here (the retired mysql-operations skill is an inactive alias of this skill).

Quality Standards

• Make storage engine, character set, collation, key, and transaction assumptions explicit.
• Prefer integrity in schema constraints and transactional boundaries before application-only enforcement.
• Include migration safety notes for locks, long-running changes, rollback, and data verification.

Anti-Patterns

• Treating absorbed reference files as active skills or separate routing entrypoints.
• Loading every migrated child reference instead of the one that matches the task.
• Producing generic advice without constraints, evidence, or next verification steps.

Outputs

• MySQL schema, SQL, migration, or review output with loaded references and validation evidence.

References

• Load the retained MySQL operations workflow for backup, restore, replication, production tuning, monitoring, and incidents.
• Load only the references/<old-skill>.md files named in the workflow when their depth is required.

Evidence Produced

Inputs

Capability contract

Review SQL and propose DDL by default. Execute migrations, routines, or data changes only with authorised credentials, environment scope, backup evidence, and rollback.

Degraded mode

If EXPLAIN plans or production statistics are unavailable, provide read-only hypotheses and validation SQL; do not claim a query is tuned.

Decision rules

Domain Anti-Patterns

• Using SELECT star in stable contracts. Fix: name columns.
• Building SQL by interpolation. Fix: bind parameters.
• Adding indexes without write-cost review. Fix: measure both paths.
• Using zero dates as missing values. Fix: use nullable semantics.
• Changing a hot table without lock analysis. Fix: test the DDL plan.
• Using AUTO_INCREMENT, MAX+1 or a trigger for a visible document number. Fix: counter row locked with SELECT ... FOR UPDATE inside the save transaction (tenant-document-numbering).