This information comes straight from my life. I was forced to learn - how Bugzilla organizes database because of nitpicky requests from users - for tiny changes in wording, rather than having people re-educate - themselves or figure out how to work our procedures around the tool. It - sucks, but it can and will happen to you, so learn how the schema works - and deal with it when it comes.
So, here you are with your brand-new installation of Bugzilla. - You've got MySQL set up, Apache working right, Perl DBI and DBD talking - to the database flawlessly. Maybe you've even entered a few test bugs to - make sure email's working; people seem to be notified of new bugs and - changes, and you can enter and edit bugs to your heart's content. Perhaps - you've gone through the trouble of setting up a gateway for people to - submit bugs to your database via email, have had a few people test it, - and received rave reviews from your beta testers.
What's the next thing you do? Outline a training strategy for your - development team, of course, and bring them up to speed on the new tool - you've labored over for hours.
Your first training session starts off very well! You have a - captive audience which seems enraptured by the efficiency embodied in - this thing called "Bugzilla". You are caught up describing the nifty - features, how people can save favorite queries in the database, set them - up as headers and footers on their pages, customize their layouts, - generate reports, track status with greater efficiency than ever before, - leap tall buildings with a single bound and rescue Jane from the clutches - of Certain Death!
But Certain Death speaks up -- a tiny voice, from the dark corners - of the conference room. "I have a concern," the voice hisses from the - darkness, "about the use of the word 'verified'."
The room, previously filled with happy chatter, lapses into - reverential silence as Certain Death (better known as the Vice President - of Software Engineering) continues. "You see, for two years we've used - the word 'verified' to indicate that a developer or quality assurance - engineer has confirmed that, in fact, a bug is valid. I don't want to - lose two years of training to a new software product. You need to change - the bug status of 'verified' to 'approved' as soon as possible. To avoid - confusion, of course."
Oh no! Terror strikes your heart, as you find yourself mumbling - "yes, yes, I don't think that would be a problem," You review the changes - with Certain Death, and continue to jabber on, "no, it's not too big a - change. I mean, we have the source code, right? You know, 'Use the - Source, Luke' and all that... no problem," All the while you quiver - inside like a beached jellyfish bubbling, burbling, and boiling on a hot - Jamaican sand dune...
Thus begins your adventure into the heart of Bugzilla. You've been - forced to learn about non-portable enum() fields, varchar columns, and - tinyint definitions. The Adventure Awaits You!
If you were like me, at this point you're totally clueless about - the internals of MySQL, and if it weren't for this executive order from - the Vice President you couldn't care less about the difference between - a - "bigint" - - and a - "tinyint" - - entry in MySQL. I recommend you refer to the - MySQL documentation - . Below are the basics you need to know about the Bugzilla database. - Check the chart above for more details.
To connect to your database:
bash# - - mysql - - -u root -
If this works without asking you for a password, - shame on you - - ! You should have locked your security down like the installation - instructions told you to. You can find details on locking down - your database in the Bugzilla FAQ in this directory (under - "Security"), or more robust security generalities in the - MySQL - searchable documentation. -
You should now be at a prompt that looks like this:
mysql> -
At the prompt, if - "bugs" - - is the name you chose in the - localconfig - - file for your Bugzilla database, type:
mysql - - use bugs; -
Imagine your MySQL database as a series of spreadsheets, and - you won't be too far off. If you use this command:
mysql> - show tables from bugs; -
you'll be able to see the names of all the - "spreadsheets" - (tables) in your database.
From the command issued above, ou should have some - output that looks like this: -
+-------------------+ -| Tables in bugs | -+-------------------+ -| attachments | -| bugs | -| bugs_activity | -| cc | -| components | -| dependencies | -| fielddefs | -| groups | -| keyworddefs | -| keywords | -| logincookies | -| longdescs | -| milestones | -| namedqueries | -| products | -| profiles | -| profiles_activity | -| tokens | -| versions | -| votes | -| watch | -+-------------------+ - |
- Here's an overview of what each table does. Most columns in each table have
-descriptive names that make it fairly trivial to figure out their jobs.
-
-attachments: This table stores all attachments to bugs. It tends to be your
-largest table, yet also generally has the fewest entries because file
-attachments are so (relatively) large.
-
-bugs: This is the core of your system. The bugs table stores most of the
-current information about a bug, with the exception of the info stored in the
-other tables.
-
-bugs_activity: This stores information regarding what changes are made to bugs
-when -- a history file.
-
-cc: This tiny table simply stores all the CC information for any bug which has
-any entries in the CC field of the bug. Note that, like most other tables in
-Bugzilla, it does not refer to users by their user names, but by their unique
-userid, stored as a primary key in the profiles table.
-
-components: This stores the programs and components (or products and
-components, in newer Bugzilla parlance) for Bugzilla. Curiously, the "program"
-(product) field is the full name of the product, rather than some other unique
-identifier, like bug_id and user_id are elsewhere in the database.
-
-dependencies: Stores data about those cool dependency trees.
-
-fielddefs: A nifty table that defines other tables. For instance, when you
-submit a form that changes the value of "AssignedTo" this table allows
-translation to the actual field name "assigned_to" for entry into MySQL.
-
-groups: defines bitmasks for groups. A bitmask is a number that can uniquely
-identify group memberships. For instance, say the group that is allowed to
-tweak parameters is assigned a value of "1", the group that is allowed to edit
-users is assigned a "2", and the group that is allowed to create new groups is
-assigned the bitmask of "4". By uniquely combining the group bitmasks (much
-like the chmod command in UNIX,) you can identify a user is allowed to tweak
-parameters and create groups, but not edit users, by giving him a bitmask of
-"5", or a user allowed to edit users and create groups, but not tweak
-parameters, by giving him a bitmask of "6" Simple, huh?
- If this makes no sense to you, try this at the mysql prompt:
-mysql> select * from groups;
- You'll see the list, it makes much more sense that way.
-
-keyworddefs: Definitions of keywords to be used
-
-keywords: Unlike what you'd think, this table holds which keywords are
-associated with which bug id's.
-
-logincookies: This stores every login cookie ever assigned to you for every
-machine you've ever logged into Bugzilla from. Curiously, it never does any
-housecleaning -- I see cookies in this file I've not used for months. However,
-since Bugzilla never expires your cookie (for convenience' sake), it makes
-sense.
-
-longdescs: The meat of bugzilla -- here is where all user comments are stored!
-You've only got 2^24 bytes per comment (it's a mediumtext field), so speak
-sparingly -- that's only the amount of space the Old Testament from the Bible
-would take (uncompressed, 16 megabytes). Each comment is keyed to the
-bug_id to which it's attached, so the order is necessarily chronological, for
-comments are played back in the order in which they are received.
-
-milestones: Interesting that milestones are associated with a specific product
-in this table, but Bugzilla does not yet support differing milestones by
-product through the standard configuration interfaces.
-
-namedqueries: This is where everybody stores their "custom queries". Very
-cool feature; it beats the tar out of having to bookmark each cool query you
-construct.
-
-products: What products you have, whether new bug entries are allowed for the
-product, what milestone you're working toward on that product, votes, etc. It
-will be nice when the components table supports these same features, so you
-could close a particular component for bug entry without having to close an
-entire product...
-
-profiles: Ahh, so you were wondering where your precious user information was
-stored? Here it is! With the passwords in plain text for all to see! (but
-sshh... don't tell your users!)
-
-profiles_activity: Need to know who did what when to who's profile? This'll
-tell you, it's a pretty complete history.
-
-versions: Version information for every product
-
-votes: Who voted for what when
-
-watch: Who (according to userid) is watching who's bugs (according to their
-userid).
-
-
-===
-THE DETAILS
-===
-
- Ahh, so you're wondering just what to do with the information above? At the
-mysql prompt, you can view any information about the columns in a table with
-this command (where "table" is the name of the table you wish to view):
-
-mysql> show columns from table;
-
- You can also view all the data in a table with this command:
-
-mysql> select * from table;
-
- -- note: this is a very bad idea to do on, for instance, the "bugs" table if
-you have 50,000 bugs. You'll be sitting there a while until you ctrl-c or
-50,000 bugs play across your screen.
-
- You can limit the display from above a little with the command, where
-"column" is the name of the column for which you wish to restrict information:
-
-mysql> select * from table where (column = "some info");
-
- -- or the reverse of this
-
-mysql> select * from table where (column != "some info");
-
- Let's take our example from the introduction, and assume you need to change
-the word "verified" to "approved" in the resolution field. We know from the
-above information that the resolution is likely to be stored in the "bugs"
-table. Note we'll need to change a little perl code as well as this database
-change, but I won't plunge into that in this document. Let's verify the
-information is stored in the "bugs" table:
-
-mysql> show columns from bugs
-
- (exceedingly long output truncated here)
-| bug_status| enum('UNCONFIRMED','NEW','ASSIGNED','REOPENED','RESOLVED','VERIFIED','CLOSED')||MUL | UNCONFIRMED||
-
- Sorry about that long line. We see from this that the "bug status" column is
-an "enum field", which is a MySQL peculiarity where a string type field can
-only have certain types of entries. While I think this is very cool, it's not
-standard SQL. Anyway, we need to add the possible enum field entry
-'APPROVED' by altering the "bugs" table.
-
-mysql> ALTER table bugs CHANGE bug_status bug_status
- -> enum("UNCONFIRMED", "NEW", "ASSIGNED", "REOPENED", "RESOLVED",
- -> "VERIFIED", "APPROVED", "CLOSED") not null;
-
- (note we can take three lines or more -- whatever you put in before the
-semicolon is evaluated as a single expression)
-
-Now if you do this:
-
-mysql> show columns from bugs;
-
- you'll see that the bug_status field has an extra "APPROVED" enum that's
-available! Cool thing, too, is that this is reflected on your query page as
-well -- you can query by the new status. But how's it fit into the existing
-scheme of things?
- Looks like you need to go back and look for instances of the word "verified"
-in the perl code for Bugzilla -- wherever you find "verified", change it to
-"approved" and you're in business (make sure that's a case-insensitive search).
-Although you can query by the enum field, you can't give something a status
-of "APPROVED" until you make the perl changes. Note that this change I
-mentioned can also be done by editing checksetup.pl, which automates a lot of
-this. But you need to know this stuff anyway, right?
-