New in MySQL Utilities release-1.1.0

New in MySQL Workbench 5.2.44 is the latest release of MySQL Utilities 1.1.0. This release contains a new utility called the MySQL Utilities Users' Console (mysqluc).

The MySQL Utilities Users' Console is designed to make using the utilities easier. While it is not a new utility in the sense it doesn't provide any new functionlity for managing MySQL servers or data, it does provide a unique shell environment with command completion, help for each utility, user defined variables, and type completion for options.

That's right, you no longer have to type out the entire name of the utility. For example, you can type mysqldbe and press the TAB key and it will complete the command as mysqldbexport. Don't remember the name of a database utility you want to use? That's no problem either - just type mysqldb and press TAB twice. The console will list all of the utilities that start with mysqldb.

The same is true for options. Type a few characters of the option name and press TAB to complete it or press TAB again if nothing returns and you will see a list of the options that match the prefix.

If that wasn't powerful enough, the best feature of the console allows you to define variables and reuse them in your commands.

For example, if you are planning to use a number of utilities or run the same utility many times, you can set a variable to store the connection information and just reuse it for each command. Here is how you could do that:

mysqluc> set SERVER=root:root@some.host.far.away:13000
mysqluc> mysqlrplshow --master==$SERVER ...
Note: user defined variables have a lifetime of the console run time.

There are a number of console commands as well. To see a list, enter 'help'.

mysqluc> help
Command                 Description                                       
----------------------  ---------------------------------------------------
help utilities          Display list of all utilities supported.          
help           Display help for a specific utility.              
help | help commands    Show this list.                                   
exit | quit             Exit the console.                                 
set =  Store a variable for recall in commands.          
show options            Display list of options specified by the user on  
                        launch.                                           
show variables          Display list of variables.                        
                 Press ENTER to execute command.                   
                Press ESCAPE to clear the command entry.          
                  Press DOWN to retrieve the previous command.      
                    Press UP to retrieve the next command in history. 
                   Press TAB for type completion of utility, option, 
                        or variable names.                                
              Press TAB twice for list of matching type         
                        completion (context sensitive).                   
If you've been using MySQL Utilities or want to try them out, the users' console makes it easy to get started. Go to http://dev.mysql.com and download the latest version of MySQL Workbench and try out MySQL Utilties. You will find MySQL Utilities listed as a plugin to MySQL Workbench.