MySQL 5.6 Reference Manual Including MySQL NDB Cluster 7.3-7.4 Reference Guide
MySQL supports an plugin API that enables creation of server
plugins. Plugins can be loaded at server startup, or loaded and
unloaded at runtime without restarting the server. The plugins
supported by this interface include, but are not limited to, storage
engines, INFORMATION_SCHEMA
tables, full-text
parser plugins, partitioning support, and server extensions.
MySQL distributions include several plugins that implement server extensions:
Plugins for authenticating attempts by clients to connect to MySQL Server. Plugins are available for several authentication protocols. See Section 6.2.11, “Pluggable Authentication”.
A connection-control plugin that enables administrators to introduce an increasing delay after a certain number of consecutive failed client connection attempts. See Section 6.4.2, “The Connection-Control Plugins”.
A password-validation plugin implements password strength policies and assesses the strength of potential passwords. See Section 6.4.3, “The Password Validation Plugin”.
Semisynchronous replication plugins implement an interface to replication capabilities that permit the source to proceed as long as at least one replica has responded to each transaction. See Section 17.3.9, “Semisynchronous Replication”.
MySQL Enterprise Edition includes a thread pool plugin that manages connection threads to increase server performance by efficiently managing statement execution threads for large numbers of client connections. See Section 5.5.3, “MySQL Enterprise Thread Pool”.
MySQL Enterprise Edition includes an audit plugin for monitoring and logging of connection and query activity. See Section 6.4.4, “MySQL Enterprise Audit”.
MySQL Enterprise Edition includes a firewall plugin that implements an application-level firewall to enable database administrators to permit or deny SQL statement execution based on matching against allowlists of accepted statement patterns. See Section 6.4.5, “MySQL Enterprise Firewall”.
The following sections describe how to install and uninstall plugins, and how to determine at runtime which plugins are installed and obtain information about them. For information about writing plugins, see The MySQL Plugin API.