We are happy to share with you that the mysqlbinlog tool has been enhanced. Starting on 8.0.17, the user can instruct the mysqlbinlog tool to negotiate, with the server that it connects to, whether to use protocol compression or not.

Since MySQL 5.6, the mysqlbinlog tool can connect to a remote server and act as a slave. This means that the tool can stream the binary log directly from a remote server. Then it can decode and print its content or just save it locally as if they were a raw copies of the remote binary log files.

As of MySQL 8.0.17, the mysqlbinlog tool has the new –compress/-C flag to instruct the connection protocol handshaking to request protocol compression between the server and the itself. This was a simple change to the tool that allows protocol compression, whenever possible, between the server and the tool.

The user interface is the same as other mysql client tools. It works like this:

Alright, this was a small but nice addition to mysqlbinlog. You can read more technical details about it in the worklog entry itself. We hope you like and use it. Enjoy!