Time for action – searching using PHPMyAdmin

In most cases, the filters that can be applied via the Bulk user actions tool are sufficient to allow you to obtain the students you are searching for in your system. In some cases however, it is much more efficient to search for the information directly using the PHPMyAdmin tool. One such case is when you have a large number of users in your system (several thousand or more) and wish to search using a numeric condition, such as greater than or equal to, using the profile fields. The Moodle core, as of 1.9.9+, does not perform this operation as efficiently as it should and executing such a command via the Bulk user actions tool can put a heavy enough load on your MySQL to cause it to freeze up. The Moodle development team is aware of this issue and it is scheduled to be fixed but it may take some time for it to be remedied as it is a minor issue compared to many of the other development projects they are working on. PHPMyAdmin can be used to perform...