Below are some commonly occurring issues and their solutions:
- Ensure you can connect to the database with the host, port, database, user name, and password using the mysql client. See MySQL documentation for proper security and connection information, and for the usage of the mysql client.
- If you try to list the tables and nothing happens, check the log file. There may have been an underlying error that didn’t generate a dialog. Usually this means a parameter does not exist or permissions are not sufficient to access the requested resource.
- When using a UNIX operating system, the environment variables MYSQL_HOST, MYSQL_TCP_PORT, USER and MYSQL_PWD can be used to specify the MySQL connection parameters.
- If you receive an error like “Lost connection to MySQL server during query” or “MySQL server has gone away”, you may have to increase your maximum allowed packet size server variable. This can be done by editing the my .ini file in the MySQL server installation folder. The line to edit, or add if not present, is:
max_allowed_packets=8M
The default is 1M, meaning maximum packet size is 1 MB. Safe Software recommends 8MB (8M) or more if you are reading or writing large geometric features or large blob or text values.
- Various other issues may arise depending on the values of the various option files permitted for a MySQL database and for specific servers.
- You can also try reading about common MySQL problems at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/problems.html.
Translation Errors in Workbench
There is a known issue with the MySQL Writer and Workbench Feature Type Properties.
In the Feature Type Properties for the MySQL Writer, the Database User field should be left blank. Entering a username in the field may cause the FME translation to fail. However, even if the translation is successful, MySQL will not be able to read the resulting table.