Contributing to the AskMonty Knowledgebase

Like MariaDB, the Knowledgebase is developed by a community of contributors like you. Want to get involved? Create an account or log in with your existing OpenID account, then share your expertise on any article in the Knowledgebase.

Can't find what you're looking for? Click Ask a question here on any category page. Contributors and MariaDB experts answer questions on the Knowledgebase and create articles for common questions. View the open questions and help us help other users.

BTW: The knowledgebase is not an appropriate place to ask about purchasing support for MariaDB. Instead, please use the Monty Program Ab contact page.

Keep in touch with other Knowledgebase contributors. Join us on IRC on the #maria channel on Freenode, and join the Maria Docs group and mailing list on Launchpad. Don't forget to introduce yourself.

See Contributing to the MariaDB Project for information on contributing to MariaDB itself.

Contributing Original Articles

Creating an article for the Knowledgebase is similar to asking questions. First, navigate to the category where you feel the article should be. Once there, double check that an article doesn't already exist which would work. It is usually better to improve an existing article (if possible) than to create a new one.

If you determine that a new article is needed, click on the "Create Article" button. If you are logged in and you don't see that button, you are probably viewing an article, not a category. In which case, you need to use the breadcrumbs near the top of the page to navigate up to the parent category.

If you decide to just edit an existing article, click on the "Edit" button.

When you are finished editing an article, please add a revision comment, this will help our editors as they review edits.

Also, when editing an article — or creating a new one — you can select whether to subscribe to it. When you are subscribed to an article you will receive an email every time the page is updated. To unsubscribe from a page, click on the Edit button, uncheck the subscribe box and click Save.

Formatting Content

Articles, questions, and comments are formatted in the Creole markup language. The Editing Help page has information on the various supported tags and macros. If you are familiar with mediawiki or other wikis, you should have no trouble getting up to speed with Creole.

Translating Knowledgebase Articles

See the Translation HOWTO for information on translating Knowledgebase articles.

How to View Your (and others') Edit History

You can view your recent edit history by clicking on your username (it's displayed at the top right of every page, next to the search box).

The link will be of the form http://kb.askmonty.org/user/id/your-username and if you know the username of another user you can put their username in the address bar to view their edit history.

Contribution statistics for all users are located here: http://kb.askmonty.org/stats/users/

Some style notes

English (US) is the preferred variant of the English to use when creating original articles for the Knowledgebase.

This does not mean that we believe the content should only be available in English. We would like the content to be available in as many languages as possible. However, so that we can verify the accuracy of a new article, it first needs to be written in English.

Tasks

We are working on having an issue tracker to track things that need improvements in the Knowledgebase. Until then, we have a partial list below. This list is not exhaustive. If you find something that needs improvement, just edit the page. If you're unsure, discuss your idea on the mailing list.

• CREATE EVENT
  • Write a detailed explanation of the SCHEDULE clause, with example.
  • Document the ON COMPLETION clause.
  • Document ENABLE, DISABLE, and DISABLE ON SLAVE.
  • Document COMMENT.
  • Document the time units.

• CREATE FUNCTION
• CREATE PROCEDURE
  • Split the CREATE FUNCTION documentation from CREATE PROCEDURE and put it on the CREATE FUNCTION page. Make sure to still link to CREATE FUNCTION (UDF) from CREATE FUNCTION.

• GRANT
  • Document the MAX_* options.
  • Document the SSL options.
  • Document the global FILE privilege.
  • Document the global PROCESS privilege.
  • Document the global RELOAD privilege.
  • Document the global REPLACTION CLIENT and REPLICATION SLAVE privileges.
  • Document the global SUPER privilege.
  • Document the database CREATE ROUTINE privilege.
  • Document the database CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES privilege.
  • Document the database EVENT privilege.
  • Document the database LOCK TABLES privilege.
  • Document the table/column REFERENCES privilege.
  • Document the table TRIGGER privilege.

• SELECT
• Document ALL, DISTINCT, and DISTINCTROWS.
• Document SQL_SMALL_RESULT, SQL_BIG_RESULT, SQL_BUFFER_RESULT, SQL_CACHE, SQL_NO_CACHE, and SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS.
• Document FOR UPDATE and LOCK IN SHARE MODE.
• Mention and link to SELECT INTO for SELECT INTO, SELECT INTO OUTFILE, and SELECT INTO DUMPFILE.
• For GROUP BY, mention effect of ASC and DESC, and document WITH ROLLUP.
• Document calling PROCUDURE in SELECT.