If you have not been keeping up with MySQL news, MySQL 5.7 reaches end of life in October 2023. This means no more bug fixes or security updates for MySQL 5.7. Users will be effectively forced to upgrade to MySQL 8.

Upgrading to MySQL 8 from 5.7 is nowhere near as painless as the transition from 5.6 to 5.7.

As a MySQL Principal Architect at Percona, I’ve had several customers over the past few months wanting to begin the upgrade process from 5.7 to 8.0, and all of them have experienced the exact same show-stopping issue with a new reserved word in MySQL 8: Groups.

Reserved keyword – Groups

Most notably, and the issue my customers are facing (and the primary reason for this blog post), is the addition of GROUPS as a reserved keyword.

You can read more about reserved keywords in a previous blog, MySQL 5.7 Upgrade Issue: Reserved Words. In short, a reserved keyword in MySQL is a word that has special meaning to MySQL itself and cannot be used by end-users without escaping/quoting the keyword. You can see the full list of reserved keywords here.

The simplest solution is to escape the keyword using backtick (`). Note that single quote (‘) and double quotes (“) will not work to escape the reserved keyword.

The same goes for DML as well:

Upgrade checker

If you want to verify things are all good with your 5.7 -> 8.0 upgrade, you can use the MySQL Shell with the built-in util.checkForServerUpgrade() function.

This function will connect to your existing MySQL 5.7 and perform more than 20 different checks, including reserved keyword usage, removed SQL modes, removed variables, new default variable values, usage of utf8mb3, and much more.

Percona to the rescue

Worried about upgrading? Percona can provide help and assistance during your upgrade journey. Our support staff can provide you with simple, quick guidance, or our professional services can step in and do everything for you.

Most importantly, we also offer extended MySQL 5.7 support, beyond its end-of-life in October 2023. If you are unable to upgrade to MySQL 8 before October ’23, then this extended support may be the perfect choice for your business.

If you have any questions or concerns or need any help with your upgrade path to 8.0, please get in touch with us.

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