Many database management tasks become difficult as you move from millions of rows and gigabytes of data to billions of rows and terabytes of data. Such tasks include ingesting data while maintaining indexes; changing schemas without downtime; and supporting connections, replication, and backup. For some scaling problems (connections and replication), MySQL® is better than most of the competition. For others, such as indexing, schema changes, and backup, MySQL has typically been harder to use. Fortunately, the tasks MySQL does well are in its core, whereas the tasks that are more difficult can be solved with storage engine plug-ins.

I recently gave a talk at IOUG Collaborate, a copy of which can be found here. This presentation discusses how MySQL’s storage engines have recently made dramatic progress in large database manageability.

A complete list of MySQL talks from the show can be found here.