[Docs]: Additional information about the database schema (MySQL) + data in plaintext instead of blobs

[jojof2024]

Hello!

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Affected area/feature

Is there any additional about the step ca database schema (espacially for MySQL)? What is saved in which tabels? Where do I find what information? And is there a possibility to save the data in the step ca database as plaintext instead of blobs?

E.g. where can I find the status and other information about the issued certificates? Is there a possibility to pull a report of all issued certificates in plaintext? Or is there a possibility in general to pull a report of all data in plaintext?

[tashian]

Hi there.

We use blobs because they are compatible across all of the types of databases that we support, including key-value stores like BadgerDB. Unfortunately, we don't have the capacity to document the database schema anytime soon.

An alternative is to parse the step-ca logs (which you can configure to emit in json), as they will contain the contents of every certificate issued.

Or, our commercial CA offers searchable logs of issued certificates in the UI or via an API call.