And just like that, another month has passed! We hope November treated you well. With the end of the year right around the corner, we’ve been focused on getting lots of database content and product updates out the door before year’s end.

Let's take a look at what we shipped in November.

📋 Changelog

• We just launched a huge update to Insights – Anomalies! This new view in Insights helps you identify and debug database slowdowns by showing you exactly which queries are running slower than expected. Available on all plans now.

• Fivetran integration - We partnered with Fivetran to create a new Fivetran + PlanetScale connector, making it easier than ever to load your PlanetScale data into other destinations via Fivetran. 
• New Managed documentation - Did you know you can run PlanetScale in your own AWS or GCP account? Learn all about our Enterprise Managed offering in the new Managed docs.

📖 Blog

• MySQL replication: Best practices and considerations - Learn the best practices for configuring MySQL replication, and how to ensure your data is always available.
• Three surprising benefits of sharding a MySQL database - There is more to sharding than simply increasing data throughput. In this article, we explore three different benefits of sharding your database.
• Webhook security: a hands-on guide - Learn what went into building PlanetScale webhooks. This article covers webhook security topics like SSRF, webhook validation, DDoS, and more.
• Introducing Insights Anomalies - This new update to PlanetScale Insights introduces smart query monitoring to detect slower than expected queries in your database.
• Announcing the Fivetran integration - Learn how you can extract, load, and transform your PlanetScale data with Fivetran.
• Announcing Vitess 18 - Vitess 18 is now generally available with a number of new enhancements designed to improve usability, performance, and foreign key constraint support.
• PlanetScale ranks 188th in Deloitte’s top 500 fastest-growing companies - We are pleased to announce that PlanetScale has been named on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500™.
• A guide to HTML email with Ruby on Rails and Tailwind CSS - Learn how to build HTML emails using Rails and Tailwind CSS. We also cover how to overcome some common obstacles such as Gmail message clipping, large file size, Apple autolinking, and more.

📹 Video

We released several videos over on our YouTube channel this month! We’ve been working hard to make our channel the go-to place for MySQL and database video content. If you have any content requests, make sure you reply to this email and let us know what you’d like to see. Check out our latest videos below, and we'd love for you to subscribe while you’re at it ♥️

• You don’t need NoSQL (use MySQL)
• Store 8 feature flags in 1 integer (Bitwise operations in MySQL)
• Storing feature flags as JSON (with indexing)
• Saving a SaaS on the weekend
• You don't always need JOINs
• Many to many relationships in MySQL

If you haven’t already checked it out, we also have a 7+ hour  MySQL for Developers course – completely free! This comprehensive course covers everything you need to know about using MySQL: creating an efficient schema, indexing, writing performant queries, and more.

💼 Work with us

Want to help us with our mission of making databases fast, powerful, and easily scalable – without sacrificing developer experience? We’re currently hiring for a number of roles: Enterprise Product Manager, Solutions Architect, Head of Product Marketing, and more! Check out our Careers page to see the full list of openings.

💡 November MySQL tip

Indexes, indexes, indexes. If you notice a query is running slower than expected, and it doesn’t have an index, there’s a good chance you may be able to speed it up by adding one! You can use our in-dashboard Insights tool to help identify which queries may benefit from adding an index.

1. Go to your PlanetScale dashboard and click on your database.
2. Click the “Insights” tab.
3. Scroll down to the table underneath the graph.
4. Click on the ”rows read/rows returned” column to sort.

Queries that read a lot of rows but only return a small amount of results are good candidates for optimization. Generally, a high number here can indicate that the query may benefit from an index. If any of the queries at the top of your “rows read/rows return” sorted list run fairly often, you should explore optimizing them to read fewer rows.

In one of our recent YouTube videos, Saving a SaaS on the weekend, we show off a hands-on example of how this works. If you want a refresher on how to add indexes, see the Index section of our free MySQL course.

We hope you enjoyed this month's newsletter. As always, if you have any suggestions for format, content requests, or you just want to say hi, don't hesitate to reach out! You can reply to this email and we'll be in touch.

Cheers,

The PlanetScale Team