OpenLampTech No. 222

Are faster database queries better? | 14 ways to add custom CSS in the WordPress block editor | sqlfluff | MySQL v9.6 foreign key management

Mar 06, 2026

Thank you for reading the OpenLampTech newsletter!

If someone awesome shared this newsletter with you and you are not yet subscribed, please use the Subscribe button below and join:

OpenLampTech has sponsorship opportunities for your brand, product, service, or job listing in the weekly newsletter.

As an independent publication, collaboration is very affordable. (See the updated and reduced pricing.)

Sponsor OpenLampTech

All commentary on the below curated content is mine unless otherwise directly quoted.

Fast database queries are not always better

That’s a scroll-stopping title if I ever saw one.

Most “database-y” folks will almost always disagree with this title. But, if you dig deeper, there may be a bit of truth here.

A lot of what is an acceptable slow or fast query is best determined when what is considered slow or fast is defined for the particular system or application.

[tim.macdonald.au]

14 ways to add Custom CSS in WordPress Block Editor

I struggle with adding CSS in just one way. 😆

14?

This article explores the various ways you can add or change CSS in block themes (only).

In my opinion, it would be ideal for everything to live in the site’s single CSS file (or theme.json file for block themes), but this doesn’t always seem to be the case.

[Gutenberg Times]

No More Hidden Changes: How MySQL 9.6 Transforms Foreign Key Management

There is some interesting and important information concerning foreign keys and their management in MySQL v9.6, as quoted here from the source article:

“Starting with MySQL 9.6, foreign key checks and cascade operations will be handled directly by the SQL engine rather than the InnoDB storage engine.”

[The Oracle MySQL Blog]

sqlfluff

I haven’t used it myself (yet), but this is a very interesting SQL tool I saw mentioned in another newsletter I want to share with OpenLampTech readers.

Quoted from the GitHub page here:

“SQLFluff is a dialect-flexible and configurable SQL linter. Designed with ELT applications in mind, SQLFluff also works with Jinja templating and dbt. SQLFluff will auto-fix most linting errors, allowing you to focus your time on what matters.”

sqlfluff supports several different SQL dialects.

[github.com/sqlfluff/sqlfluff]