Date: 05/18/06 (MySQL Communtiy)    Keywords: mysql, browser, sql, web

Hey folks, another newbie-to-mysql-on-windows question here, and many thanks again to the help on my previous one...

In my previous mysql experience on unix-like platforms, it was generally considered a Good Thing to turn off networking if you didn't "need" it, just talking directly to the mysqld instead. In cases where a local web stack on the same box was all that ever needed to talk to mysql, this worked well, and unless I'm smoking crack, it even seemed to perform a little better than chatting on 3306 using TCP/IP and worrying about telling either the daemon or the firewall (or both) to restrict such conversations to localhost.

Somewhat naively, I tried to do this in Windows today and got some unexpected results.

I'm working with an old version of coldfusion and modern mysql and recently discovered that rather than the "use an old version of Connector J" method mentioned in the Macromedia knowledge base, I can just install the nice current version of the mysql ODBC Connector, then set up a system DSN right in Windows. I tell coldfusion to use this "ODBC socket" and poof, things seem pretty quick. So great, I think, now that I'm not using the old Connector J which seemed to require a TCP/IP method, now I should be able to skip networking in the mysql daemon and just tell the system DSN config where the "socket" is.

Not so simple! I turned off networking (using mysql Administrator, since I'm trying to "be GUI" about this) and as expected, it uncommented "skip networking" in the my.ini file. However, after this, Windows couldn't start the mysql service anymore. Furthermore, the Administrator and Query Browser didn't seem to be able to connect without a port number. As soon as I re-enabled networking by editing the my.ini file, everything was fine.

Did I miss something? Am I smoking crack? Should I just leave well enough alone and use networking with mysql configured to only allow connections from localhost and Windows told not to expose 3306 to the outside world?

All opinions welcome - just please don't suggest "use something other than crutsy old cold fusion" because unfortunately that's not really an option. TIA!

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/mysql/95724.html