DB Leaks and Registration Errors

Hi freesoftwarewiz I understand what you mean and one of the plugin developers will look into your issue further.

However I am a bit curious in regards to the following two comments below.

1) When a user is deleted from the SimpleMembership users DB, the user ID is never re-used. It leaves a “hole” – a deleted record – in the DB. If you have thousands of users and lots of turnover (users joining, users deleting their accounts, etc.) that will severely affect DB performance, which affects the site.

I was always under the impression that if a user ID was deleted from an account it really should never be used again because all records to that ID should be kept only for that ID. Unless I am mistaken by your question. I am just curious to know more about your question.

In regards to your another comment..

When the registration form page is completed successfully,
it SHOULD send people to the login page (OR a page of our choice). NOT back to the registration form.

As far as I know it always takes the user to the login page and not the registration page. I did test this feature the other day but I did it with a Free membership account, it was not a paid account. So you are saying this is happening with a Paid account you create in your website?

This looks like a good and easy-to-use plugin, so I’m interested to hear more about how these issues are resolved. As much as I want to use this plugin, I can’t risk future Paypal payment and DB performance issues. Thanks!

1) ?not re-using the User ID is fine AS LONG as the the record is truly deleted, and not just FLAGGED as deleted. That would give you a huge, slow DB.

BUT Be aware: you have a different issue – because WordPress itself DOES re-use the ID’s. So if I delete user ID from simplemembership, user 2 stays user 2 – but in wordpress’s list of users, the person who ss user 2 in in simple, wordpress makes them user 1 – it re-uses the number. That can cause confusion.

2) to reply to your question:
“…So you are saying this is happening with a Paid account you create in your website?”

?EXACTLY. We, have NOT tested the free signup, but the PAID membership is NOT going to the login page – it comes back to the registration form, screws up the header, and displays error messages. (even though there was NO error – the user was added just fine)

That will cause countless issues and emails from users.

Joe C.
Chief Engineer
?

@joe C. I think you better report this to the official support forum.

Thank you

I thought this WAS the support forum! I have to report the same thing in two locations?

i tried direct email on the plugin home site on 2 other issues over 10 days ago. never got a response.

Joe C.

Hi Joe C, you can post your questions here and in their own forum pointed out in the link above.

I just thought it might get more attention because your issue seems to be something that the developers will need to look into as soon as they can.

Regards

freesoftwarewiz,
thanks for your feedback.
1) relational database systems doesn’t really depend on the pattern of data stored. they are smart enough process data efficiently no matter distributed or not distributed data is. they achieve this efficiency with the help of some other tools or techniques. on a bold margin, these are:
1. indexing:
indexing is the magic that helps db to find data quickly.

firstly, you need to look for which columns are being used more in “WHERE” clause. you need to define index on that column. most common indexing are B-Tree and HASH index (vendor like oracle, microsoft, SAP Sybase offer some other proprietary indexes. we are not concerned about this since wordpress works mostly with mysql and (rarely) postgres ). these can be clustered or non clustered based on the physical organization of data. if you are doing more exact matching query then use hash index. but if you are doing more range query then use B-TREE index. it doesn’t really care if there is so called “hole” or not. there are many many different database tuning tools out there. that can help find out potential column needing index.

2. complex query:
complex queries sometimes can cause slowness since they may require a lot of I/O operation. But we in simple membership don’t use complex queries.

3. Index fragmentation:
index fragmentation prevent from obtaining full benefit of indexing. you can use index defragmenter to get rid of that.

4. use of temporary tables:
temporary tables are sometimes slower if it uses swap space (thereby causing disk I/O)

there are many many db tuning techniques that can be applied but these are responsibility of a Database Admin.

NOTE about WordPress user ID:
simplemembership plugin doesn’t care about wordpress user ID. it just uses user name to sync with wp core database.

about PAID account issue:
thanks for reporting, we will investigate this.

thanks,

I don’t need a lecture on Database lad – I have been a software engineer for 35 years. It is a “real world” FACT that a thousand “deleted” but not actually physically deleted records WILL cause issues, relational or not.

If you choose to ignore a potential issue, that is your decision.

And when you have a thousand members, it IS confusing when the wordpress subscribers ID are different from the membership Ids. It IS a wordpress site, after all.

And yes, I did re-report the issues on the other forum.

Joe C.

it doesn’t matter whether you are software engineer for 35 years or 10000 years. its just how database works. i am working for one of the word’s largest e-tailers, have experience working with not thousand rather millions of user data where physically deleted record is a fact of life. so i am quite aware of the extent of performance impact. Yes we have listened to your concern and can happily disregard because it a non-issue.

Please NOTE that word press user ID and simple membership user ID — there ARE NOT same. this is how simple membership plugin works. yes .. we have intentionally maintained this separation.

thanks

And I doubt your databases are any larger than those we dealt with when I was at NASA – index fragmentation and and DOES have an impact without external intervention (defragmenting).

And I did not suggest a problem with having a separation between WordPress DB and simplemembership. I simply maintain that the same user having different user IDs in two locations can cause confusion and could be avoided.

So far, as far as “support” is concerned, we have you being antagonistic and “happily disregard” issues, and on your site, the admin suggesting that the solution to the paypal redirection problem for paid users, is to reword the email(!) that they are sent before they complete the registration form. That is not helpful, and frankly, neither are the attitudes.

I give our programmers 3 rules: be courteous, be helpful, and fix the problem without excuses.

But that is us.

[ Signature moderated ]

you never know which one is bigger. because its nasa, you cannot support your claim in public i think ?? and i don’t see NASA in the list of 10 world’s largest databases (https://pandidba.blogspot.com/2014/01/top-10-largest-databases-in-world.html) but the company i work for is there. Again that’s a system spanning multiple data centers across the globe. mind you, we are talking about wordpress. if your system is of such scale, you are not doing to install wordpress and be happy with that.

and when mentioned “index fragmentation”, you are just proving my 3rd point (in my first reply). that’s DBA responsibility

i “happily disregard”ed because its not an issue. people who reported issues, we fixed them. But we don’t like to spend too much time discussing no-issue.

So unless you have found some “real” issues in our software, we will not be replying to this thread.

Thanks.

It IS a real problem – and you prove MY point about antogonistic, defensive responses instead of being helpful.

And the DB was one of TWO problems in this thread, as I pointed out in the previous entries.

And for those who are following this thread: no software is perfect. So regardless the plugin, when the “support” is antagonistic, defensive, argumentative, maintains there “are no issues”, etc. you might want to consider a different plugin. We are evaluating 23 for our list, so I can make some recommendations (all but 3 are free).

Joe C.

@joe C sorry to hear about your experience with this plugin. I am sure that in the very near future the plugins functionality will be improved even further. The developers do their best to provide a great plugin for everyone to use.

Once again thank you for reporting back and testing the plugins functionality.

Happy Easter ??

Kind Regards