Evaluation of SQLE SQL Auditing Tool's Support for MySQL 8.0

Introduction

SQLE, an extensible open‑source SQL audit tool developed by ActionTech, is widely used for SQL review and standardized release processes. The article tests SQLE version sqle-ce-1.2203.0 against MySQL version 8.0.28 to assess its support for new MySQL features.

DDL Statement Review

1. Create Table Test Ⅰ

The tool correctly flags violations of table‑creation rules and naming conventions.

2. Create Table Test Ⅱ (reserved‑word conflict)

Two statements are examined: one syntactically correct, the other using the MySQL 8.0 reserved word rank . SQLE fails to raise an error for the rank table, indicating its keyword database needs updating; the statement would still fail at deployment.

3. Alter Table Index/Column Test

SQLE accurately reports errors when index or column definitions violate rules.

4. Disable Index Test

When an index is altered to an invisible state, SQLE does not produce the expected “no‑issue” result because the syntax ALTER TABLE ... ALTER INDEX ... is new in MySQL 8.0 and not yet parsed by SQLE.

DCL Statement Review

1. SET Command Test

Standard SET statements are handled, but the newer SET PERSIST … syntax is not recognized, leading to unexpected audit results.

2. GRANT and Role Authorization Test

User and role creation/authorization statements are correctly identified and approved by SQLE.

DML Statement Review

1. INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE Test

All DML statements conforming to development standards are accepted; violations are reported as errors.

2. SELECT Test

SELECT queries are audited successfully, with non‑compliant patterns flagged.

DDL‑DML Contextual Association

Tests verify that newly added columns in DDL are correctly linked to subsequent DML INSERT statements, while unrelated DML statements are properly rejected.

JSON Feature Test

MySQL 8.0 JSON capabilities, including JSON_TABLE , are largely supported; other JSON syntax behaves as in MySQL 5.7.

Conclusion

The evaluation shows that SQLE handles the majority of DDL, DML, and DCL statements for MySQL 8.0 similarly to MySQL 5.7, and it can associate DDL changes with related DML. However, a few MySQL 8.0‑specific features—new reserved words such as RANK and ROW_NUMBER , the ALTER INDEX syntax, SET PERSIST , and JSON_TABLE —are not yet supported, though they are rarely used in everyday SQL development and are expected to be addressed in future SQLE releases.