There is a package that is not installed by default that I now grab systematically, it’s called parallel.

apt-get install parallel

or on mac

brew install parallel

The parallel command is a pretty complex beast, but the package also comes with the sql command, which simplifies queries to any database from the console. There is just one command whatever the sql backend you use.

I first setup my dburl in .sql/aliases as:

:dbmb mysql:///managebac
:dboa mysql:///openapply
:dbis psql://isis:password@localhost/intersis

And I can then use those aliases for quick sql commands:

sql :dbmb "select count(*) from users"
sql --show-processlist :dbis

Check http://www.gnu.org/software/parallel/sql.html for more examples of use. Also check http://www.gnu.org/software/parallel/package it’s very powerful, but a bit complicated to catch it, maybe I will provide some examples of practical use in a later tip.