Planet MySQL

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posted by Giuseppe Maxia on Tue 15 Mar 2011 00:27 UTC
Tags:

(edit) mysql, benchmark, Testing, tricks, QA, command line

I have been doing quite a lot of benchmarking recently.
I needed to find a safe way of measuring the time spend by the database doing a long task, like catching up on a huge backlog of accumulated replication updates. The problem with measuring this event is that I can record when it starts, but I can't easily detect when it finishes. My initial approach was to monitor the database and count the tables rows to see when the task was done, but I ended up affecting the task performance with my additional queries. So I thought of another method.
Since I had control on what was sent from the master to the slave, I used the following:
The initial time is calculated as the minimum creation time of the databases that I know are created during the exercise. Let's say that I had 5 databases named from db1 to db5:

set @START = (select min(create_time) from

[Read more...]

beware of the log

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posted by Giuseppe Maxia on Wed 02 Mar 2011 15:25 UTC
Tags:

(edit) mysql, bugs, QA, logs, detect

The MySQL general log is one of my favorite features for a quick debug. I especially like the ability of starting and stopping it on demand, which was introduced in MySQL 5.1.
However, using the general log has its drawbacks.
Today I was debugging a nasty bug that results from two statements that should be applied sequentially, but that were instead concurrent. These kind of problems are hard to cope with, as they are intermittent. Sometimes all goes well, and you get the expected result. And then, sometimes the statements fly on different directions and I stare at the screen, trying to understand where did they stray.
After some try-and-fail, I decided to enable the general log just before the offending statements, and to turn it down immediately after. Guess what? With the general log on, the test

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Continuent is hiring - Support and QA engineers wanted

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posted by Giuseppe Maxia on Mon 10 Jan 2011 12:03 UTC
Tags:

(edit) mysql, support, jobs, QA, hiring, careers, sontinuent

Continuent is hiring. The business is growing, the opportunities are piling up nicely, and we need to beef up the team with the addition of some new professionals.
The mist urgent posts to fill are a
QA Engineer and a Support Engineer, both experts of their specific trades and of database clustering.
We are looking at the matter without borders. Although it would be preferable to find candidates in

[Read more...]

How to create a private cloud in your laptop

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posted by Giuseppe Maxia on Fri 19 Nov 2010 14:19 UTC
Tags:

(edit) virtualization, cloud, laptop, QA

Everybody is moving to cloud architectures, although not all agree on what cloud computing is. In my limited understanding, and for the purpose of my work, cloud computing is a quick and versatile availability of virtual machines.
Now, if my purpose was deploying these machines, a private cloud in one host (namely, my laptop) would not make sense. But to create a flexible testing environment, it works very well.
Users of virtual machines software such as VMWare or VirtualBox may ask what's new here. You can create many virtual machines and use them within the same host.
True, but creating a new virtual machine in one minute without duplication of resources is not so easy. This is what this article

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QA at Continuent. A serendipitous job.

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posted by Giuseppe Maxia on Tue 02 Nov 2010 14:19 UTC
Tags:

(edit) mysql, jobs, QA, continuent

A few days ago, I left the MySQL team at Oracle, after more than 4 years of work dedicated mostly to the MySQL community.
Someone will probably remember that, when I joined MySQL in 2006, I started my work in the QA team. It was no coincidence. My previous work as a consultant was very much focused on database development quality, even when my customers had approached me for different reasons.
Let's be frank. I am a minority. It's not common to find someone who is passionate about QA. I am aware of being a rare bird, who likes testing and bug searching, and doing all the little steps that all together improve the overall quality of a software

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MySQL Workbench 5.2 – Code Statistics

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posted by The Workbench Team on Mon 30 Nov 2009 15:58 UTC
Tags:

(edit) coding, developers, QA

A community member recently noted, that it takes quite a long time to compile MySQL Workbench. So he started wondering about how big the project actually is and asked for the Lines Of Code we have in our MySQL Workbench 5.2 repository.

We did not have this information at hand and therefore Alfredo ran some scripts during the weekend and generated this nice breakdown.

As you can see, we almost have 700k lines of code to maintain. Given that the MySQL Server itself has about 900k lines of code this is a pretty decent number I think, especially for a small team of 7.

Failing by choice. Another bug-vs-feature debate ends

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posted by Giuseppe Maxia on Sun 21 Jun 2009 09:20 UTC
Tags:

(edit) mysql, community, bugs, Testing, usability, QA

A long standing bug

Among the many outstanding bugs for MySQL, there is one that has sparked a fierce discussion, not only in the bug report itself, but also in blogs, forums, mailing lists.
Bug #19027: MySQL 5.0 starts even with Fatal InnoDB errors was neglected for long time, until finally it got fixed, and it is available in MySQL 5.1.36.
First off, what is it about?
In short, if an engine doesn't initialize correctly, the MySQL server starts anyway, without the offending engine. Depending on how you use the failing engine, this could be either a minor annoyance or a complete disaster.
Annoyance: ARCHIVE fails to initialize, and you create tables with the default engine (usually MyISAM), and after a while you realize that the disk is filling up faster than you expected. You will find

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some useful additions to query generator

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posted by Shane Bester on Fri 19 Jun 2009 05:47 UTC
Tags:

(edit) QA

I've been on vacation this week, and decided to fine-tune some old QA code. Opened the manual to see the syntax for a select statement, and afterwards added to my random select generator the following:

all index hints (force, use, ignore, for join, for order by, for group by)
lock in share mode, for update
key_block_size for individual indexes
hash, btree, rtree for individual indexes
unique, fulltext, spatial for indexes

Especially important is the 'lock in share mode' addition. The reason is InnoDB
has many serious bugs with this locking mode (insert ... select, and others) in read committed mode.

So, I don't need multitable delete or update to reproduce those bugs, since I can just do a simple select locking in share mode. For example, the following bugs previously went without proper testcase

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PHP 5.3.0 RC 2 released

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posted by Johannes Schlüter on Thu 07 May 2009 21:02 UTC
Tags:

(edit) PHP, QA, php releases, php53, planet php, php testing

As others wrote, or as you can read on php.net or in my twitter feed we've released the second, long awaited, release candidate of PHP 5.3.0.

5.3 is rather big release including support for namespaces, closures, phar archives, internatioalization support via the new intl extension, improved SQLite support, mysqlnd as backend for the MySQL exensions, impressive performance improvements, ... and tons of other bigger and minor things.

Even though this server is running 5.3 already it's not suggested to be used in production evironments, yet but I'd really like to encourage everybody to test it and give feedback! I'm also interested in positive feedback, not

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MySQL QA at the Users Conference

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posted by Giuseppe Maxia of team blog MySQL Community on Wed 18 Mar 2009 10:04 UTC
Tags:

(edit) mysql, speaking, conference, QA, session

If you liked the article on QA before releasing, you may want to mark your calendars for this session at the MySQL Users Conference and Expo 2009, where Omer BarNir and Trim Pershad will tell everything about Software Quality and Testing in MySQL.

Trim and Omer are veteran QA engineers, whose main goal is to improve the quality of MySQL products. Their session will tell you how the QA process evolved and what is going on right now.

How MySQL tests server binaries before a release

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posted by Giuseppe Maxia on Wed 18 Mar 2009 09:28 UTC
Tags:

(edit) mysql, sun, release, 5.1, QA

What happens when the binary files of a fresh MySQL version is published on the web?

You may have noticed that the date on the release notes is not the same as the date the downloads are available. Sometimes there is a two weeks gap, sometimes more. Many people in the community have asked what is going on in the meantime.

The answer is a lot of hard work. The code is built for all the operating systems supported by MySQL, and tested in each platform (1). During this process, portability problems, test case glitches, and other things not caught in the normal daily build and test are fixed.

This task involves QA engineers, Build engineers, the Maintenance team, with help and cooperation from the Services, Development, and

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posted by Giuseppe Maxia on Wed 18 Mar 2009 02:28 UTC
Tags:

(edit) mysql, sun, release, 5.1, QA

What happens when the binary files of a fresh MySQL version is published on the web?

You may have noticed that the date on the release notes is not the same as the date the downloads are available. Sometimes there is a two weeks gap, sometimes more. Many people in the community have asked what is going on in the meantime.

The answer is a lot of hard work. The code is built for all the operating systems supported by MySQL, and tested in each platform (1). During this process, portability problems, test case glitches, and other things not caught in the normal daily build and test are fixed.

This task involves QA engineers, Build engineers, the Maintenance team, with help and cooperation from the Services, Development, and

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posted by Giuseppe Maxia on Wed 18 Mar 2009 02:28 UTC
Tags:

(edit) mysql, sun, release, 5.1, QA

What happens when the binary files of a fresh MySQL version is published on the web?

You may have noticed that the date on the release notes is not the same as the date the downloads are available. Sometimes there is a two weeks gap, sometimes more. Many people in the community have asked what is going on in the meantime.

The answer is a lot of hard work. The code is built for all the operating systems supported by MySQL, and tested in each platform (1). During this process, portability problems, test case glitches, and other things not caught in the normal daily build and test are fixed.

This task involves QA engineers, Build engineers, the Maintenance team, with help and cooperation from the Services, Development, and

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posted by Giuseppe Maxia on Wed 10 Dec 2008 14:10 UTC
Tags:

(edit) mysql, sun, QA, rqg, guest

I am glad to host in these pages a post by Philip Stoev, a remarkable QA engineer, creative, resourceful, and a notorious troublemaker.
I met Philip by email in 2007, when I was exploring his Perl modules, which I used for one of my most rewarding articles. A few months later, when we met in person during the MySQL Developers Meeting, Philip was hired as a QA engineers, with my warmest recommendations.
This post is about the

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Next MySQL Workbench 5.0.20 Release Almost Ready To Ship

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posted by The Workbench Team on Thu 24 Apr 2008 20:33 UTC
Tags:

(edit) coding, QA

As promised we are continuing our strong efforts after reaching GA and our announcement at the MySQL Users Conference (find a nice press article here).

Alfredo managed to fix a serious bug that almost seemed to be of random nature and happened on certain OnMouseDown and OnMouseUp events on the canvas.

Another thing that got improved is the drawing order of connections between table figures on the canvas. Previously the connections would be drawn on top of tables, resulting in a messy image. Now connections are always drawn behind tables. To make that work we had to remove the nesting of layers - a feature that does not really make sense for a database tool anyway.

The team will meet in the week of May 12th in Kiev where we are going to define the detailed plans for Workbench 5.1

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posted by Sheeri K. Cabral on Wed 16 Apr 2008 18:48 UTC
Tags:

(edit) mysql, Group Blog Posts, mysqlconf, Testing, QA, 2008, sandbox

Here are my liveblogging notes from MySQL Sandbox: Easily Using Multiple Database Servers in Isolation by Giuseppe Maxia

Giuseppe has been a community member since 2001, and in the past year or so, a MySQL Employee.

He likes to give things away for free — he gave away T-shirts to the early arrivers to the workshop, and that’s why he’s giving away the sandbox as well. The sandbox is NOT an official MySQL product. It is released from GPL, available from http://sf.net/projects/mysql-sandbox.

Why the sandbox? To be able to set up 1 server in under 10 seconds. And to be able to set up multiple MySQL instances very

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posted by The Workbench Team on Mon 07 Apr 2008 16:54 UTC
Tags:

(edit) Announcements, community, QA

We have just officially released the WB 5.0 RC3 build and are planning the GA build to happen soon. One might ask, what is our criteria to call something GA? Well, it means that there must not be any known and verified P1 (crashing) and P2 (very serious bug with no workaround) bugs. Does it means that there are no bugs left or that we have implemented every feature request? No.

Therefore our efforts will not stop after the GA build. We still plan to get a new release out every 3rd week including all fixes and improvements that are necessary. This is a first list of things we are planning to release in a future GA release.

Bug fixes
Most important are bug fixes of course. Please keep reporting bugs, you did a great job in the past - and if you do so, we will keep closing those bug reports as fast as we can.

Enable connection-end points dragging/reordering
This

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Tell me what your code looks like?

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posted by The Workbench Team on Thu 07 Feb 2008 10:24 UTC
Tags:

(edit) coding, QA

From time to time it is necessary to get a bigger picture of your project in terms of size, test coverage, code vs. comments ratio and others (aka metrics). While it is quite difficult to find a good (and free) code coverage tool for C++ there is already a very nice tool package called DPack, which is not only freely available but also gives us some very useful additions in our IDE. One of those features is code statistics.

(more…)

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posted by The Workbench Team on Mon 10 Dec 2007 19:11 UTC
Tags:

(edit) Announcements, QA

For all new contributors devoted to quality, FAQ was slightly updated with new section.

putting it all together

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posted by Shane Bester on Tue 23 Oct 2007 18:49 UTC
Tags:

(edit) QA, testcase

Last post was about Rainbow testing. So that's old news, and I lost count of the number of bugs it found, and have been fixed. Probably 30+ crashes.

Now, I have to put together all these odds & ends of code I wrote disparately over the last 18 months into a single collection to enable complete end-to-end testing.

I have now got roughly the following:

o) random table maker
o) query maker based on any tables, (using predefined rules)
o) data generator for any tables
o) complete charset collection for each valid character
o) database of mysql functions, data types
o) multi-threaded testing environment for any queries
o) query results comparer for any queries
o) rainbow, which will provide help in making good coverage of functions, etc.

What's needed still? Well, I would like 56 hours in a day ... More

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some results of rainbow

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posted by Shane Bester on Wed 19 Sep 2007 11:56 UTC
Tags:

(edit) QA, crash

ok folks. here's some results:



mysql> select last_errno,count(*) from 
queryqueue group by last_errno;
+------------+----------+
| last_errno | count(*) |
+------------+----------+
|          0 |  1600796 |
|       1048 |     1971 |
|       1053 |        1 |
|       1139 |       35 |
|       1267 |    19722 |
|       1270 |     4243 |
|       1271 |     8944 |
|       1416 |     2284 |
|       1580 |    23225 |
|       2003 |       28 |
|       2013 |     1606 |
+------------+----------+
11 rows in set (0.00 sec)

error 2013 means lost connection to server (read: server crashed).
so there are many bugs found already. 1606 crashes out of 1.6 million
executed queries, is great.

check my rss feed for the

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sql rainbow tables

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posted by Shane Bester on Wed 12 Sep 2007 18:57 UTC
Tags:

(edit) QA, testcase

I thought of a brilliant QA plan. Create sql rainbow tables! Just trust me, this system of QA will be very powerful in bug finding. Especially important will be the comparison of old/new versions of mysql. Writing a prototype now, on my day off.

Just during prototype development, I've discovered a handful of bugs. I'm testing all functions that are documented in the manual. This is alot that I've written up:


mysql> select count(*),category from func group by category;
+----------+--------------+
| count(*) | category     |
+----------+--------------+
|        6 | arithmetic   |
|        7 | bit          |
|       60 | casting      |
|       47 | comparison   |
|       52 | datetime     |
|       18 | encryption   |
|      127 | geometry     |
|       17 | information  |
|        7 | logical

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new direction for test development

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posted by Shane Bester on Tue 21 Aug 2007 17:38 UTC
Tags:

(edit) QA, testcase

I've been thinking about this today. My attempts thus far to write random queries which stress various parts of the server have worked, and served a purpose - but have been rather huge and clumsy.

For example a 5 union select, each comprising of 7 joins did have it's value.. The problem with huge random queries is simply that the results cannot be verified as easily as they were constructed (unless you run the same on various DBMS). These huge tests are mostly only good for checking if the server crashes.

Now, I wish to try write testcases that have these properties:

small
results are self-verified
each test is random, but reproducible given a seed value

Tonight I'll throw together a code-generator to do simple insert/select and post any interesting results here later.

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Planetarium

A long standing bug