MySQL distributions include several plugins that implement server extensions:
Plugins for authenticating attempts by clients to connect to MySQL Server. Plugins are available for several authentication protocols. See Section 6.3.7, “Pluggable Authentication”.
A connection-control plugin that enables administrators to introduce an increasing delay after a certain number of consecutive failed client connection attempts. See Section 6.5.2, “The Connection-Control Plugin”.
A password-validation plugin implements password strength policies and assesses the strength of potential passwords. See Section 6.5.3, “The Password Validation Plugin”.
Semisynchronous replication plugins implement an interface to replication capabilities that permit the master to proceed as long as at least one slave has responded to each transaction. See Section 17.3.9, “Semisynchronous Replication”.
MySQL Enterprise Edition includes a thread pool plugin that manages connection threads to increase server performance by efficiently managing statement execution threads for large numbers of client connections. See Section 5.5.4, “MySQL Enterprise Thread Pool”.
MySQL Enterprise Edition includes an audit plugin for monitoring and logging of connection and query activity. See Section 6.5.4, “MySQL Enterprise Audit”.
MySQL Enterprise Edition includes a firewall plugin that implements an application-level firewall to enable database administrators to permit or deny SQL statement execution based on matching against whitelists of accepted statement patterns. See Section 6.5.5, “MySQL Enterprise Firewall”.
The following sections describe how to install and uninstall plugins, and how to determine at runtime which plugins are installed and obtain information about them. For information about writing plugins, see Section 24.2, “The MySQL Plugin API”.