Village SQL - A MySQL Fork With Easy Extensions

 I was happy to see a new MySQL fork appear. Village SQL bills itself as 'A drop-in replacement for MySQL with extensions for the agentic AI era'. Mainstream Oracle MySQL does have Plug-ins, but I have found them less easy to develop and use than other implementations, such as PostgreSQL extensions. So how does it work?

Head over to https://github.com/villagesql/villagesql-server and follow the directions to clone and build the code. You will see detailed instructions for Linux and Mac builds. I followed the directions, let the make run overnight (slow hampsters in my testbed Ubuntu laptop).  

The instructions were complete and easy to follow.

First Run

$ ~/build/villagesql/bin/mysql -u root -h 127.0.0.1
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 10
Server version: 8.4.6-villagesql0.0.1-dev Source distribution
Copyright (c) 2000, 2025, Oracle and/or its affiliates.
Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its
affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective
owners.
Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.
mysql> \s
--------------
/home/stoker/build/villagesql/bin/mysql  Ver 8.4.6-villagesql0.0.1-dev for Linux on x86_64 (Source distribution)
Connection id: 10
Current database:
Current user: root@localhost
SSL: Cipher in use is TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256
Current pager: stdout
Using outfile: ''
Using delimiter: ;
Server version: 8.4.6-villagesql0.0.1-dev Source distribution
Protocol version: 10
Connection: 127.0.0.1 via TCP/IP
Server characterset: utf8mb4
Db     characterset: utf8mb4
Client characterset: utf8mb4
Conn.  characterset: utf8mb4
TCP port: 3306
Binary data as: Hexadecimal
Uptime: 1 min 20 sec
Threads: 2  Questions: 6  Slow queries: 0  Opens: 159  Flush tables: 4  Open tables: 59  Queries per second avg: 0.075
--------------
mysql> 

So far, so good. And very familiar to the MySQL Community.

So, I followed the directions for loading an example.


Load Extension

There is even a clever example of installing and using an extension in the Village SQL docs:

mysql> SELECT extension_name, extension_version

FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.EXTENSIONS;



mysql> INSTALL EXTENSION vsql_complex;


Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.02 sec)


mysql> SELECT extension_name, extension_version FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.EXTENSIONS;

+----------------+-------------------+

| EXTENSION_NAME | EXTENSION_VERSION |

+----------------+-------------------+

| vsql_complex   | 0.0.1             |

+----------------+-------------------+

1 row in set (0.00 sec)


mysql> 

-- Create a database and use it

CREATE DATABASE demo;

USE demo;


-- Create a table using the new COMPLEX type

CREATE TABLE electronic_components (

    id INT PRIMARY KEY,

    name VARCHAR(50),

    impedance COMPLEX

);


-- Insert complex number values (using string literals)

INSERT INTO electronic_components VALUES

    (1, 'Resistor', '(100,0)'),

    (2, 'Inductor', '(0,50)'),

    (3, 'Capacitor', '(25,-75)');


-- Query the data

SELECT * FROM electronic_components;


-- Use extension functions (note: functions require extension prefix)

SELECT

    name,

    impedance,

    vsql_complex.complex_abs(impedance) AS magnitude,

    vsql_complex.complex_real(impedance) AS resistance,

    vsql_complex.complex_imag(impedance) AS reactance

FROM electronic_components;


mysql> SELECT

    ->     name,

    ->     impedance,

    ->     vsql_complex.complex_abs(impedance) AS magnitude,

    ->     vsql_complex.complex_real(impedance) AS resistance,

    ->     vsql_complex.complex_imag(impedance) AS reactance

    -> FROM electronic_components;

+-----------+-----------+-------------------+------------+-----------+

| name      | impedance | magnitude         | resistance | reactance |

+-----------+-----------+-------------------+------------+-----------+

| Resistor  | (100,0)   |               100 |        100 |         0 |

| Inductor  | (0,50)    |                50 |          0 |        50 |

| Capacitor | (25,-75)  | 79.05694150420949 |         25 |       -75 |

+-----------+-----------+-------------------+------------+-----------+

3 rows in set (0.01 sec)


mysql> 


Wow!

It is nice to see a new MySQL fork.  The code looks solid, the documentation is great, and my curiosity is piqued.  This is the type of thing that can win the hearts and minds of the MySQL Community, a group that has had a sour time of things of late.

So, first impressions are good. Now to play, er, experiment a little more.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Migrating From MySQL To PostgreSQL in Five Simple Steps

Image
There are many reasons you may want to migrate from MySQL to PostgreSQL, which we will skip over for brevity.  I see many questions about moving tables and data, and sadly, the answers range from sloppy to incredibly complicated.  Each database migration is unique, as issues range from heavily relying on a vendor's feature to extremely complex schemas that require attention to minute detail. Step 1 This may seem obvious, but the first step is access to the original 'source' database. You will need FULL admin access to the database.  If you do not have full access for security, administrative, or other reasons, you will most likely not receive all the desired data.  We will use DBeaver Enterprise to connect to the source database. We need to choose a MySQL database driver Configure the connection We will be porting the World database. In this example, we will port the MySQL World database. This dataset has been used for decades in MySQL documentation, training, and ex...
Read more

Does Artificial Intelligence Query MySQL Better Than You?

Image
 The signal-to-noise ratio in the hype for Artificial Intelligence is incredibly high. There are many claims that AI will replace software developers. Many years ago, developers were told to find other jobs as a new programming language was designed to be written by nonprogrammers, replacing expensive coders. The Common Business Orientated Language, or COBOL, was a big hit and is still very popular in some sectors. But it did not replace programmers. But can an AI write Structured Query Language (SQL) as well for use with MySQL, or better than you?  I decided to use the MySQL World and Sakila databases because they have been around for decades. Nearly everyone who has had tangential exposure to MySQL has used them, and their tables are easy to understand. These tried and true schemas have been used for documentation, blogs, webinars, and demos for years, so I had little doubt that some of that had been scraped and fed into the AI. I randomly picked Grok as the AI and will try ...
Read more

Do You Need An AI Assistant?

Image
 Artificial Intelligence has been over hyped the last several years. But one of the bright, shining spots for AI is acting as an assistant. a super-powerful IDE, when working with a database. Example You want to find your top three customers in the Sakila database. This database has been used for decades in the MySQL world. As your question in English (or another language) The '@ai' directs the rest of the prompt to the DBeaver Artificial Intelligence Assistant See the generated SQL Here is the generated Structured Query Language And get the results. Now we have the top three customers without having to write any SQL directly Fixing Mistakes Occasionally, you may 'fat finger' a query.  I will take the query from above and change first_name to just first .   SELECT c . customer_id , c . first , c . last_name , SUM ( p . amount ) AS total_revenue FROM customer AS c JOIN payment AS p ON c . customer_id = p . customer_id GROUP BY ...
Read more