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What should I put on my checklist when I look at MySQL database for the first time? I would appreciate your help. Thanks.

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This question is very general and I'd suggest clarifying it with more context, but I'll give it a shot.

I would look at:

  • security. What are the users that have privileges on that database? What are the privileges (i.e. read-only on specific tables, or do they have grant option permissions)?

  • entities. What are the major entities and their relationships?

  • performance. What queries are resource hogs? Are appropriate indexes in place?

  • denormalization. Is the schema purposely denormalized? If so, why and is it appropriately denormalized?

  • foreign keys. Are they enforced (do the tables use InnoDB)?

  • size. What are the biggest tables? Which tables are expected to grow the fastest?

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