Usually one would expect that ALTER TABLE with ALGORITHM=COPY will be slower than the default ALGORITHM=INPLACE. In this blog post we describe the case when this is not so.

One of the reasons for such behavior is the lesser known limitation of ALTER TABLE (with default ALGORITHM=INPLACE) that avoids REDO operations. As a result, all dirty pages of the altered table/tablespace have to be flushed before the ALTER TABLE completion.

Some history

A long time ago, all “ALTER TABLE” (DDLs) operations in MySQL were implemented by creating a new table with the new structure, then copying the content of the original table to the new table, and finally renaming the table. During this operation the table was locked to prevent data inconsistency.

Then, for InnoDB tables, the new algorithms were introduced, which do not involve the full table copy and some operations do not apply the table level lock – first the online …

When connecting to a local MySQL instance, you have two commonly used methods: use TCP/IP protocol to connect to local address –  “localhost” or 127.0.0.1  – or use Unix Domain Socket.

If you have a choice (if your application supports both methods), use Unix Domain Socket as this is both more secure and more efficient.

How much more efficient, though?  I have not looked at this topic in years, so let’s see how a modern MySQL version does on relatively modern hardware and modern Linux.

Benchmarking  TCP/IP Connection vs Unix Domain Socket for MySQL

I’m testing Percona Server for MySQL 8.0.19 running on Ubuntu 18.04 on a Dual Socket 28 Core/56 Threads Server.  (Though I have validated results on 4 …

Percona Server for MySQL 8.0.18 ships all functionality to run Group Replication and InnoDB Cluster setups, so I decided to evaluate how it works and how it compares with Percona XtraDB Cluster in some situations.

For this I planned to use three bare metal nodes, SSD drives, and a 10Gb network available for in-between nodes communication, but later I also added tests on three bare metal nodes with NVMe drives and 2x10Gb network cards.

To simplify deployment, I created simple ansible scripts.

Load Data

The first initial logical step is to load data into an empty cluster, so let’s do this with our sysbench-tpcc …

In my last blog post I showed you how to get the entire Percona “Stack” up and running on a Raspberry Pi. This time around, I would like to show the impact on performance between using an SSD hard disk and a standard hard disk.

Disk performance is a key factor in Percona Server for MySQL (or any RDB platform) performance on a Raspberry Pi 4.

Test set up

Each test below was run three times per Hard Disk and I took the best of the three for comparison.

Hardware

• Raspberry Pi 4+ with 4GB ram.
• Disk 1: USB3 Western Digital My Passport Ultra, 1TB
• Disk 2: USB3 KEXIN 240GB Portable External SSD Drive

Hardware stayed consistent …

Database administrators are responsible for maintaining the privacy and integrity of data. When the data contains confidential information, your company has a legal obligation to ensure that privacy is maintained. Even so, being able to access the information contained in that dataset, for example for testing or reporting purposes, has great value so what to do? MySQL Enterprise Edition offers data masking and de-identification, so I decided to contribute similar functionality to Percona Server for MySQL. In this post, I provide some background context and information on how to use these new functions in practice.

Some context

One of the most important assets of any company is data. Having good data allows engineers to build better …

Some say that the best password is the one you don’t have to remember. That’s possible with MySQL, thanks to the auth_socket plugin and its MariaDB version unix_socket.

Neither of these plugins is new, and some words have been written about the auth_socket on this blog before, for example: how to change passwords in MySQL 5.7 when using plugin: auth_socket. But while reviewing what’s new with MariaDB 10.4, I saw that the unix_socket now comes installed by default and is one of the authentication methods (one of them because in MariaDB 10.4 a single user can have more than one authentication plugin, …

ProxySQL 2.0.7, released by ProxySQL, is now available for download in the Percona Repository along with Percona’s proxysql-admin tool.

ProxySQL is a high-performance proxy, currently for MySQL and database servers in the MySQL ecosystem (like Percona Server for MySQL and MariaDB). It acts as an intermediary for client requests seeking resources from the database. René Cannaò created ProxySQL for DBAs as a means of solving complex replication topology issues.

This release includes ProxySQL 2.0.7 which introduces many new features and enhancements and also …

Percona announces the release of Percona Server for MySQL 5.7.27-30 on August 22, 2019 (downloads are available here and from the Percona Software Repositories). This release merges changes of MySQL 5.7.27, including all the bug fixes in it. Percona Server for MySQL 5.7.27-30 is now the current GA release in the 5.7 series. All of Percona’s software is open-source and free.

Bug Fixes:

• Parallel doublewrite buffer writes must crash the server on an I/O error occurs. Bug fixed …

ProxySQL 2.0.6, released by ProxySQL, is now available for download in the Percona Repository along with Percona’s proxysql-admin tool.

ProxySQL is a high-performance proxy, currently for MySQL and database servers in the MySQL ecosystem (like Percona Server for MySQL and MariaDB). It acts as an intermediary for client requests seeking resources from the database. René Cannaò created ProxySQL for DBAs as a means of solving complex replication topology issues.

This release includes ProxySQL 2.0.6 which introduces many new features and enhancements and also …

Percona announces the release of Percona Server for MySQL 5.6.45-86.1 on August 20, 2019. Download the latest version from the Percona web site or the Percona Software Repositories. You can also run Docker containers from the images in the Docker Hub repository.

Based on MySQL 5.6.45, and including all the bug fixes in it, Percona Server for MySQL 5.6.45-86.1 is the current GA release in the Percona Server for MySQL 5.6 series. …