Database Systems course - Tel Aviv University

The Ultimate Connection Guide

Important Stuff

TAU's MySQL name/port: mysqlsrv.cs.tau.ac.il

Sakila schema username/password: sakila/sakila

Database connection in general

To connect to a database you need to choose:

1. The MySQL Server to connect to. This is usually either

1.a. Local MySQL server you have installed on your computer. Useful for homework, for testing your project locally.

1.b. The school MySQL server on mysqlsrv.cs.tau.ac.il. Has sakila schema installed. Useful for testing and submitting the final project. (Connection from home is done via a tunnel, see below.)

2. The MySQL Client to connect from. This is usually either

2.a. MySQL Workbench tool installed on your computer / the computer lab (Schreiber 019)

2.c. MySQL commandline tool on nova

2.d. Your code, via jdbc MySQL connector

When you open/configure/write the code of the client, provide the parameters of the chosen server, as follows.

Connection	User	Password	Host	Port	Comments (do not forget to…)
From home client to home server	Your user	Your password	localhost	3306	1.     Install MySQL including server and Workbench
Connect from home client to TAU server	TAU MySQL user	TAU password	localhost	3305	1.      Download Putty 2.      Create TAU database account 3.      Open SSH tunnel first!
Connect from TAU lab to TAU server	TAU MySQL user	TAU password	mysqlsrv.cs.tau.ac.il	3306 (default)	1.      Create TAU database account

Creating TAU database account

Each user can open a personal account on the school server. Just follow the instructions in the following link:

http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/system/MySQL

Note that the initial password will be sent to you by mail. The page above also includes instructions for changing this initial password.

Download links

Download MySQL server + Workbench + jconnector: (see instructions in recitation #1)

http://www.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/

Download Putty:

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html

Setting up an SSH Tunnel

The idea behind creating a tunnel is that your client would ‘think’ that the server is at localhost:3305, but the tunnel established from your machine (localhost) to nova.cs.tau.ac.il would redirect the requests to mysqlsrv.cs.tau.ac.il:3306

How to do that?

Run the latest version of Putty (note that old versions might not connect, so download the latest - this was done with 0.60) .

Set it to point to Nova (nova.cs.tau.ac.il on port 22) by SSH

We now define the tunnel:

Select “Connection > SSH > Tunnels” from the category tree.

Enter the following:
Source port: 3305 (or some other unused port on your localhost..)
Destination: mysqlsrv.cs.tau.ac.il:3306

Now hit the “Add” button. Your screen should look something like this:

Now let us just save the settings.. Go back to “Session” category, and your preferred name (in the picture “TAU - MySQL Tunneling”) and click save.

That is it! Do not forget to actually connect to nova by entering your UNIX username and password.

The following image is for using MySQL Workbench with the tunnel: