I checked some updates to Shard-Query into SVN. Partitioning support has been extended for MySQL 5.6+ to ALL partitioning types.

This includes all previously unsupported types including RANGE LIST/COLUMNS partitioned tables that are partitioned over more than one column, and HASH/KEY/LINEAR variants as well. Shard-Query now exclusively uses the PARTITION hint for partition elimination instead of WHERE clauses in MySQL 5.6. For 5.5 and previous versions, support remains limited to LIST,RANGE, and LIST/RANGE COLUMNS over a single column.

The old mysql interface DAL has been replaced completely by the PDO DAL.

There is no major difference for end users except that you have to check that the return of the query() method is an object with the is_object() function instead of checking that it is a resource with the is_resource() function. I updated bin/run_query, which is the example application.

I …

Slave delay can be a nightmare. I battle it every day and know plenty of people who curse the serialization problem of replication. For those who are not familiar with it, replication on MySQL slaves runs commands in series – one by one, while the master may run them in parallel. This fact usually causes bottlenecks. Consider these 2 examples:

• Between 1 and 100 UPDATE queries are constantly running on the master in parallel. If the slave IO is only fast enough to handle 50 of them without lagging, as soon as 51 start running, the slaves starts to lag.
• A more common problem is when one query takes an hour to run (let's say, it's an UPDATE with a big WHERE clause that doesn't use an index). In this case, the query runs on the master for an hour, which isn't a big problem because it doesn't block other queries. However, when the query moves over to the slaves, all of them start to lag because it plugs up the single …

Thankfully my RSS reader has builtin-search capability, so I can quickly skim the full RSS feed from blogs.sun.com for keywords of interest. I found the following articles quite helpful:

• Setting up MySQL Cluster using Solaris Zones by Hashamkha Pathan walks through the steps involved of setting up a virtual MySQL Cluster setup on a single Solaris instance (for evaluation purposes only - this is probably not the best idea for a productive HA environment)
• Mixing SQL and shell commands in MySQL by Amit Saha explains how to write scripts that execute both SQL statements and unix shell commands using the MySQL command line client
• …

This article describes how to install the Drupal 6.2 CMS on MySQL 6.0, using the Falcon Storage Engine. The operating system is a default Ubuntu 8.04 "Hardy Heron" (x86) installation.

I will make a few assumptions here, in order to keep the instructions simple: a fresh OS install, no other MySQL databases or web services are running or have already been installed. Both MySQL and the web server are installed on the same host. You should be able to become root to install packages and to have access to the local file system and the system configuration.

This article will explain how to install and configure Apache/PHP, MySQL 6.0 and …

As half of the world population already knows, the MySQL conference is coming in less than 3 weeks. Since this event only happens once a year, lasts only 4 days, and costs more than a Russian mail-order bride, I'd really like to get the most out of it. Considering that the schedule is completely packed, with 8 (!!) events going on in parallel, I imagine things can get a little frantic. Additionally, I've never been to a conference of such size before and I'm not sure what to expect.

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Last week at CeBit I once again had a conversation with an application developer that was not aware that it's possible to embed the MySQL Server inside an application instead of running it as a separate process. I experienced something similar at FOSDEM recently, while talking with the Amarok developers - how come that this feature is so little known? In fact, there are two possibilities for embedding MySQL (and both of them are licensed under the GPL): the first one is using the libmysqld embedded library, which is suitable if you are developing C/C++ applications:

The embedded MySQL server library makes it possible to run a full-featured MySQL server inside a client application. The main benefits are …

While helping a user with some questions about the geospatial extensions of MySQL on the #mysql-dev IRC channel on Freenode, I stumbled over this blog: How to use MySQL Spatial Extensions. There currently is just one post, but it was exactly what we were looking for: "Using Circular Area Selection". Nice work! I hope the author will soon provide more examples of how to make use of this functionality.

By the way, there is work in progress to improve the GIS functionality in MySQL - if you are looking for new GIS functions that do not use …

Since the very early days, the MySQL distribution packages contain a very useful commandline-tool named replace. As the name implies, it can be used to replace strings in text files. From the documentation:

The replace utility program changes strings in place in files or on the standard input. Invoke replace in one of the following ways:

shell> replace from to [from to] ... -- file [file] ...
shell> replace from to [from to] ... < file

from represents a string to look for and to represents its replacement. There can be one or more pairs of strings. Use the -- option to indicate where the string-replacement list ends and the filenames begin. In this case, any file named on the command line is modified in place, so you may want to make a copy of the original before converting it. …

Now that the source tree for the new Falcon Storage Engine is finally public, here's a quick HOWTO on how to compile the server from source. This procedure is described in more detail in the MySQL Manual. I assume you use Linux and have the required development toolchain installed.

You first should get the free BK client from http://www.bitmover.com/bk-client2.0.shar, unpack and install it:

$ wget http://www.bitmover.com/bk-client2.0.shar
--17:34:34--   …

Now that the source tree for the new Falcon Storage Engine is finally public, here's a quick HOWTO on how to compile the server from source. This procedure is described in more detail in the MySQL Manual. I assume you use Linux and have the required development toolchain installed.

You first should get the free BK client from http://www.bitmover.com/bk-client2.0.shar, unpack and install it:

$ wget http://www.bitmover.com/bk-client2.0.shar
--17:34:34--   …