The latest from the MySQL community

A while ago, we discussed the cross-site replication feature of the Percona PXC operator. Recently, a similar cross-site replication feature was introduced in the Percona (PS MySQL) operator v1.2.0, a topology based on Group Replication/InnoDB Cluster.

In this blog post, we will explore how to add a DR Cluster to an existing DC Cluster to form a ClusterSet environment, which provides a seamless switchover between DC/DR members. The good part is that all the complexity and configuration will be managed by the Percona operator, with very few setup steps required.

Group Replication …

A few thousand gcache.page.* files in a Percona XtraDB Cluster (PXC) data directory is not something you see every day. We came across a case where these files had been accumulating over time and slowly consuming disk space. So, let’s dig into what happened.

At first glance, it looked like GCache had simply stopped cleaning itself up. The investigation started by answering two simple questions: when did the files start appearing, and what changed in the cluster at that time?

Finding the starting point

The oldest files showed the issue started on July 9.

[hostx] percona@hostx: ~ $ ls -lh /var/lib/mysql/mysql-data/gcache.page.*
-rw-r----- 1 mysql mysql 128M Jul 9 21:42 /var/lib/mysql/mysql-data/gcache.page.000000
-rw-r----- 1 mysql mysql 128M Jul 9 21:42 /var/lib/mysql/mysql-data/gcache.page.000001
-rw-r----- 1 mysql mysql 128M Jul 9 21:42 /var/lib/mysql/mysql-data/gcache.page.000002
... …

“Would making this capability available help a meaningful part of the MySQL community build better applications or run better systems?”

Q1. MySQL has recently made available several features from the enterprise tier to the MySQL Community Edition. What is driving this direction?

The simple answer is that Community Edition needs to stay strong for the people who build, run, and depend on MySQL every day. That includes developers, DBAs, startups, large enterprises, and software vendors.

When we bring broadly useful capabilities into Community Edition, particularly in areas like observability, high availability, performance, and developer experience, the whole MySQL ecosystem benefits. Users get a better platform, and we get better feedback from real workloads at scale.

Recent examples include replication observability and Group Replication capabilities, …

Percona gives us room to work on our own AI-assisted projects, and I used mine to fix a problem I kept running into. Every time I wanted to try a new database feature, debug something tricky, or reproduce a customer issue, I ended up rebuilding much of the same infrastructure: DNS, TLS, Docker networking, database topologies, users and test data. Over the years, I wrote scripts to automate this but I still found myself copying and pasting post-installation steps from one lab to the next.

That repetition is what turned into DBCanvas, a self-hosted lab for designing, deploying, operating, and stress-testing multi-node database stacks on my own machine. Just design a topology on a canvas, click Deploy, and get real running nodes connected to the services and supporting infrastructure your test requires. Then, use the tools built into it or third party tools to load those …

Focusing on Percona Server 8.4.11-11

My previous post (Performance Progression of Percona Server for MySQL 8.4) did a brief review of the performance changes in Percona Server for MySQL 8.4 released in 2026. I recommend reading it first to better understand the material in this post.

Version 8.4.11-11 includes patches that deliver significant improvements in performance and scalability.

One of the most impressive illustrations of the performance bump is reflected in the following graph:

Graph 1 – Percona-Server 8.4.X with 8G buffer  [ INTERACTIVE GRAPH ][ …

MySQL ERROR 1731 'Non matching attribute INSTANT COLUMN(s)' breaks EXCHANGE PARTITION after ALGORITHM=INSTANT. This blog offers reasoning and fixtures.

The post MySQL INSTANT DDL breaks EXCHANGE PARTITION first appeared on Change Is Inevitable.

With MySQL Workbench 26.7, we introduced a new generation of MySQL Workbench, built on updated technology and on the MySQL Shell foundation. Alfredo Kojima’s post, Introducing MySQL Workbench 26, provides a great overview of the new architecture and the capabilities available in this release. Rather than repeat that overview, I wanted to share a few things […]

In our recent Where can you find MySQL from August through October 2026?, we shared a broad view of MySQL conferences, community activities, and user group meetups. Since then, community gatherings in Denver, Taipei, and Nashville have brought MySQL users, developers, and contributors together for technical discussion and local connection. We are continuing that momentum […]

The MySQL team at Oracle is excited to announce MySQL Workbench 26.7, the first of a new generation of the GUI administration and development tool for MySQL. A New Workbench MySQL Workbench 8 has served the community well, but it’s now old and has reached end of life. Its architecture, built on C++ and platform […]

Earlier last week I was working with Percona Binlog Server, Percona’s tool for archiving the MySQL binary log (binlog) outside of a traditional replica and exploring what it can do.…

The post How to setup and use Percona Binlog Server (PBS) first appeared on Change Is Inevitable.