> From: Tim Dunphy <bluethundr@stripped>
>
> ... this is just a test environment so getting rid of those users won't have any
> meaningful impact...
I think what Paul (who wrote a book on MySQL, by the way) was getting at was that you risk
what database folk call "referential integrity issues" if you mess with *any* data without
knowing where else it is used.
But this has a bigger impact than if you mess up referential integrity on your own tables.
It could be that MySQL is making certain assumptions -- such as a `user` record WILL be
available if referenced in some other privilege grant -- that will break things badly,
making such tables (or functions, or procs, etc.) unreachable. This could turn into a
very confusing "learning opportunity" where changing one thing has far-reaching
unintended impact. Or it may not, if you don't have other privileges defined, in which
case you may have "learned" the false assurance that you can get away with such a thing.
I've had the former "learning experience" -- that messing with privilege tables directly
resulted in strange behaviour that ended with me trashing the entire thing and
re-installing from scratch.
My rule-of-thumb: if MySQL gives you a facility for manipulating system-level tables, just
use it! :-)
----------------
:::: Jan Steinman, EcoReality Co-op ::::
