MySQL · Metamapper

Metamapper supports MySQL as a connection source. MySQL is a row-based database primarily used for transactional use cases, such as web applications.

This guide details how to setup and troubleshoot MySQL in Metamapper.

Prerequisites

A running MySQL (version 5.6 or greater) instance. Instructions for creating a MySQL database are outside the scope of this guide; it assume that you have an instance up and running. For help getting spinning up your own MySQL instance, please refer to your cloud provider's documentation.
Ability to view database connection details. Metamapper specifically needs the following information:
- IP or host
- Username
- Password
- Port (default: 3306)
- Database
Database privileges that allow you to create users and grant privileges. This is required to create a database user for Metamapper.

Choose connection method

There are two ways to connect your database.

Direct Connection

A direct connection will work if Metamapper is in the same private network as your database. A direction connection will also work if your database is publicly accessible.

SSH Tunnel

A jump host or SSH tunnel is required if your database is in a separate private network. This method uses a publicly accessible server to act as an intermediary between Metamapper and your database.

Check out this guide on setting up a SSH tunnel to work with Metamapper.

Create user

You will need to provide a user that Metamapper will use to periodically scan your MySQL instance. We recommend creating a new user so that you can easily isolate Metamapper from the rest of your infrastructure.

CREATE USER metamapper IDENTIFIED BY '<redacted>';

Grant read access to user

In MySQL, a schema is synonymous with a database. Metamapper will sync all schemas that it has read access to.

MySQL manages permissions using simple GRANT and REVOKE statements. You can allow Metamapper to read every schema in your database using the statement below. Note that the Metamapper user does need the PROCESS privilege to access the required system tables.

GRANT SELECT, PROCESS ON *.* TO 'metamapper';

If you want to then block access to certain schemas, you could run the following statements for every schema that you which to block access to:

REVOKE SELECT ON '<schema>'.* FROM 'metamapper';

You can then run the following command to will reload the grant tables in the MySQL database. This enables the changes to take effect without reloading or restarting MySQL service.

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Questions?

Metamapper is an opensource project. If you have a question that isn't answered here, check out the discussion forum.

You can also help improve this documentation by making a pull request.