Going deep with MySQL

Going deep with MySQL is the next step after the advanced material. It assumes you have finished An introduction to MySQL and Going further with MySQL. You should be comfortable with schema design, indexes, JOINs, transactions, EXPLAIN, migrations, and backups at a practical level.

The intermediate tutorials taught you how to model domains, protect data, and read query plans. These tutorials cover what bites when tables grow, traffic increases, and more than one app server talks to the database: partitioning, replication, locking, JSON columns, security hardening, observability, and multi-tenant schema choices.

We also look at how PHP and Python apps pair with MySQL at scale – connection pooling, N+1 queries, and habits that keep the database from becoming the bottleneck. These tutorials end with two mini projects: optimising a deliberately bad schema and query set, then planning a safe migration for a breaking schema change.

You need a MySQL server for the examples – local install, Docker, or a hosted instance. Staging or a scratch database is fine for replication and locking experiments; do not run destructive tests on production. Use whatever client you like: the MySQL command line, Workbench, DBeaver, or a VS Code extension.

Where the intermediate series already explains something clearly, we link back rather than repeat it. If EXPLAIN, transactions, or migration habits feel rusty, revisit those lessons first.

Work through the tutorials in order when you can. Each one builds on the last. Some topics (replication topology, deadlock diagnosis) reward slow reading and trying things on a test instance rather than skimming.