ExtraWatch Database Status

There’s nothing that vexes first-time users of JoomlaWatch (and website hosting in general) than the idea of database sizes. But if you’re using JoomlaWatch (and reading through our tutorials), you’ll probably recognize that database information really isn’t as complicated as it might seem. In fact, it’s simply a measurement of the forms and databases you’re already putting on your website.

It’s important to measure these databases for a number of reasons. The first is load time – you don’t want a database getting so large that it ends up affecting the load time of your website. The second is spam attacks. Databases are often “hack points” for spammers to infiltrate your site and post some of their spam links.
As you’ll see, when using JoomlaWatch, you likely won’t have to worry about these scenarios. One of the reasons you won’t have to worry is the Database Status page, which we’ll now explore in further detail.

Overview

Opening up the Database Status function on JoomlaWatch is exceptionally easy. Either use this handy feature at the top of all of your JoomlaWatch functions:

…or you can open it up under the top menu by clicking Components -> JoomlaWatch -> Database Status. Not too hard to remember.
Once you’ve mastered this particular maneuver, you’ll be able to access the main Database Status page. You’ll find something that looks like this:

It might seem like a lot of information to digest at first, but let’s take a closer look and explore what each column really means.
The first column, Table, is really self-explanatory: it gives the name of the database table that’s being measured.

The second column, Records, is not one that you’ll particularly have to worry about, as it corresponds to the values present in the database table itself.
The third column, Size, can be an important one to keep an eye on. It’s measured in information size, so the larger the database table, the more “space” it’s taking up on your website. As you can see in the example above, all of the database tables are relatively small and shouldn’t be causing any problems anywhere.
The next three tables deal with the changes in the database tables. Because there’s “no data” being kept for these database tables, we really shouldn’t be concerned with those, as there’s no real report to generate.

Then there’s the seventh column, which is unnamed. There you can see the icon that looks like a graph. Let’s explore this option a little further.

Using the Graph Icon

Whenever you see an icon like this associated with a row of information in JoomlaWatch, it’s generally an invitation for you to interact further. In this case, that’s exactly what it is.

In fact, if you’ve been using your JoomlaWatch features already, you’ll probably notice that this icon looks a little similar. That’s because it serves a similar function as you’ve seen in other features. Here’s what happens when you click it:

As is the case in the Live Stats feature, clicking on the graph icon brings you – what else? – a graph to look at. In this case, you can review the statistics of each individual database table as it relates to previous days.

As you can see, when you leave your databases alone (like we have), you’ll find that there isn’t a whole lot of information to be gleamed from this function. But if you ever do find yourself wanting to review the status of a certain database table, be sure to click on the graph icon to bring up more individual information about that database.
You can print off this report for further reference, of course, by clicking on the Printer icon in the upper-right hand side of the graph. Or you can simply close the window and continue reviewing your database status information.

Database Table Sizes

Scrolling down (which actually takes a while for us, as we have a lot of database tables listed), you’ll come to the next section of measurement which relates to the database table sizes. Again, reviewing these sizes can be crucially important to maintaining a site that does not occupy a lot of space.
Here’s what our table looks like:

This table is more straightforward than the one you saw above, but it’s still worth exploring exactly what’s going on here.
Here you can see the sizes of individual tables. These aren’t actually sorted by size, but alphabetically based on the name of the database table on the left. From there, you can view the rows of the database table, the presence of which strongly coincide with the raw data amount on the right-hand side of the table. You can see that jos_joomlawatch_uri is the table that’s not only occupying the most space, but is actually representing a majority of the total information present (at approximately 13 mb out of 22 mb).

Conclusion

There is a low level of interaction when it comes to using the Database Status page. Essentially, this page is generated for you to review your databases and not make many changes. Although you can tinker around a little bit and review the individual graphs for each database table, the function of Database Status is to inform you in the form of a list. In many cases, this is exactly all you need.

If you need to find a particular table, we simply suggest employing “Control + F” and typing in the name of the database table you want to review. Each chart is text-based which will allow for this easy type of searching.

• < Prev
• Next >