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I'm accessing a MySQL database using the standard MySql.Data package from Oracle. Every few releases of the application, we need to tweak the database schema (e.g. client wanted DECIMAL(10,2) changed to DECIMAL(10,3)) which the application handles by sending the necessary SQL statement. This works except that on a large database, the schema update can be a rather lengthy operation and times out.

The obvious solution is to crank up the timeout, but that results in a relatively poor user experience - I can put up a dialog that says "updating, please wait" and then just sit there with no kind of progress indicator.

Is there a way to get some kind of feedback from the MySQL server that it's 10% complete, 20% complete, etc., that I could pass on to the user?

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There's two ways to approach this problem.

The first is the easiest way, as you've suggested, and just use a progress bar that bounces back and forth. It's not great, it's not the best user experience, but it's better than locking up the application and at least it's giving feedback. Also I assume this is not something that occurs regularly and is a one-off annoyance every now and again. Not something I'd really be worried about.

However, if you really are worried about user-experience and want to give better feed back, then you're going to need to try some metrics. Taking your DECIMAL example, time the change on different row-counts. 100,000 rows, a million rows, etc etc. This will give you a napkin-guess time it might take. Note, different hardware, other things running on the computer, you're never going to get it down exact. But you have an estimate.

Once you have an estimate, and you know the row-count, you can create a real progress bar based on those estimates. And if it gets to 100% and the real operation hasn't completed, or if it finishes before you get to 100% (and you can insta-jump the bar!), it's... something.

Personally I'd go with option one, and perhaps add a helpful message that Windows commonly does. "This may take a few minutes". Maybe add "Now's a great time for coffee!". And a nice little animated gif :)

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