MySQL 9.7, a Long-Term Support (LTS) release, incorporates a variety of potential features spanning across multiple technical domains. This article covers some of the primary features introduced and evaluates their practical utility within the MySQL database environment.

Following the End-of-Life (EOL) status of MySQL 8.0, this subsequent LTS release is designed to provide enhanced stability alongside significant architectural innovations.

Let’s discuss each of these features below with some examples and usage.

Flow-control monitoring in Group Replication

Flow control monitoring has been improved and provides more granularity by introducing the additional status variables listed below.

• Gr_flow_control_throttle_count : It denotes the number of transactions that have been throttled.
• Gr_flow_control_throttle_time_sum :It denotes the time in microseconds that transactions have been …

Managing data retention policies is one of the most common operational tasks in MySQL.

Applications continuously generate transactional, audit, logging, telemetry, and event data. Over time, these tables can grow to billions of rows, causing:

• Larger backups
• Longer recovery times
• Reduced buffer pool efficiency
• Slower index maintenance
• Increased storage costs
• Degraded query performance

To address these problems, organizations typically implement retention policies based on dates or timestamps. Examples include deleting events older than 90 days or purging session data older than 30 days and so forth. The deleted data can then eventually be archived somewhere else, like in another DBMS or on external files.

One of the most widely used tools for implementing these policies in MySQL ecosystems is pt-archiver, part of the Percona Toolkit. …

tidesdb-mysql is an experimental build that was developed to verify how TidesDB, the LSM-tree key/value engine, can work with MySQL 9.7 as a storage engine. The current build is v0.2.4, and it’s an experiment, not a finished product. So you can use it in your tests if you also want to try TidesDB with MySQL and compare with MariaDB

Why we made it

There was already a way to use TidesDB from SQL. It’s TideSQL, which loads the engine into MariaDB as ha_tidesdb, and it works fine. But it doesn’t work with MySQL. So we wanted TidesDB to work with MySQL 9.7.

MariaDB and MySQL share a lot of history, but they are not the same. We couldn’t just recompile the MariaDB plugin against MySQL headers and call it done. The one thing that stayed put through all of it was TidesDB itself, doing exactly what it does anywhere else. Only the server wrapped around was changed. In result we got our implementation, so if you’re …

Having a separate DR cluster for production databases is a modern day requirement or necessity for tech and other related businesses that rely heavily on their database systems. Setting up such a [DC -> DR] topology for Percona XtraDB Cluster (PXC), which is a virtually- synchronous cluster, can be a bit challenging in a complex Kubernetes environment.

Here, Percona Operator for MySQL comes in handy, with a minimal number of steps to configure such a topology, which ensures a remote side backup or a disaster recovery solution.

So without taking much time, let’s see how the overall setup and configurations look from a practical standpoint.

PXC Cross-Site/Disaster Recovery

DC Configuration

1) Here we have a three-node PXC cluster running on the DC side.

shell> kubectl get pods -n pxc
NAME                                               READY   STATUS …

Data masking lets you hide sensitive fields (emails, credit-card numbers, job titles, etc.) while keeping data realistic for reporting, support, or testing. It is particularly useful when you collaborate with external entities and need to share your data for development reasons. You also need to protect your data and keep your customers’ privacy safe. Last […]

It may be surprising when a new InnoDB Cluster is set up, and despite not being in production yet and completely idle, it manifests a significant amount of writes visible in growing binary logs. This effect became much more spectacular after MySQL version 8.4. In this write-up, I will explain why it happens and how to address […]

When performing backups, reducing the amount of time your server is locked can significantly improve performance and minimize disruptions. Percona XtraBackup 8.4 Pro introduces improvements in how DDL (Data Definition Language) locks (aka Backup Locks) are managed, allowing for reduced locking during backups. In this post, we’ll explore the impact of these enhancements. TL;DR (Summary) […]

This blog post explains the cause of “ERROR 1412 (HY000): Table definition has changed, please retry transaction” with the specific Isolation level settings. Background As per the MySQL documentation, this error should occur for “operations that make a temporary copy of the original table and delete the original table when the temporary copy is built.” […]

The usage of MySQL Router as a Middleware/Proxy/Router has increased along with the rise in MySQL InnoDB Cluster usage. While it is still relatively easy to use in production, monitoring it to stay informed about its current status is essential. This blog post will cover how to check and monitor MySQL routers, routes, and other […]

Flow control is not a new term, and we have already heard it a lot of times in Percona XtraDB Cluster/Galera-based environments.  In very simple terms, it means the cluster node can’t keep up with the cluster write pace. The write rate is too high, or the nodes are oversaturated. Flow control helps avoid excessive […]