Mysql – Master/Slave without populating tables

Using replicate-wild-do-table=% is not the correct way to get complete replication. That would seem sensible, but here's why it isn't:

• The replicate-* options are restrictive by their presence. The *-do-* options seem to be telling the server what to "do," but in fact they are telling the server what to only do.

• The complete absence of any replicate-* configuration variables means "replicate everything."

In the simplest case, when there are no --replicate-* options, the slave executes all statements that it receives from the master. Otherwise, the result depends on the particular options given. -- http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/replication-rules.html

That, I think, is the point you are needing. It holds true for all MySQL 5.x.

Once you enable binary logging, set the server-id values on each machine, synchronize the data sets, CHANGE MASTER TO ..., and then START SLAVE, then you should have a working configuration where all DML and DDL will be replicated and your servers will be identical replicas of each other.

If you started out with identical data sets, everything should behave exactly as you would expect it to.

What MySQL replication does best and simplest is replicate entire data sets among servers without any restrictions. Trying to restrict replication to a subset of the data is a process that should carry a warning label that ends with the phrase "...unless you really know what you're doing."

When you use the --replicate-* options, the document cited above also offers this tip:

it is recommended that you avoid mixing “do” and “ignore” options, or wildcard and nonwildcard options

You are using a mix of these, which adds complexity and may explain why your DDL didn't replicate as you expected it to.

It isn't possible with replication as has been correctly pointed out, since that's not how replication works, nor can it be configured to work that way. Replication either does or does not handle any given table (depending on configuration) but when replication does handle a given table, the data is replicated and replication depends on the rows in the tables starting out and remaining identical.

What I'm hearing you say is that you want some of the same schemas and tables on the 2nd server as exist on the master, but they will be populated via external means, and you want those tables to go away when they are dropped from the master.

Here is a high-level view of how this could be accomplished via automatic means using only things built-in to MySQL.

Obviously this is a dangerous operation if not carefully written since we're talking about the automated dropping of tables and databases, so... caveat lector.

• enable the event scheduler on the archive machine
• enable the federated storage engine on the archive machine
• within another schema you create solely for the purpose of this exercise, define 2 FEDERATED tables that connect back to the master. One of these points to information_schema.tables and the other points to information_schema.schemata.
• write a stored procedure that selects from the archive machine's information_schema.schemata table, left join the federated schemata table on catalog_name, schema_name where schema_name not in ('mysql','information_schema','performance_schema','any','other','schemas','you want not','to be deleted','for sure')
• take values from the resulting rows, which will be all of the databases that exist on the local machine but not on the master... and, using dynamic sql, drop those databases from the archive machine.
• do the same thing with the information_schema.tables table, which will identify tables you can drop.
• use the event scheduler to automate the running of this stored procedure. Don't schedule it too often, perhaps only once a day, because selecting from the information_schema.tables table can be a resource-intensive operation. MySQL gathers stats when you do this that can be costly especially in terms of I/O.