I helped a charity to rebuild a MySQL server and to restore a database with a lot of data of longblob type in the last two days. Fortunately there was a dump backup file for the database in question.

However, tables with longblob column(s) were not defined with “ROW_FORMAT=COMPRESSED”. I’d like to restore that database with row compression before inserting the data. Therefore I need to modify the dump sql file. The problem is that the file is 2.5 GB and the server only has 4 GB memory. So editing it is a challenge. Fortunately, Linux has sed to save the day. Don’t you love open source free software?

I am power Vi/Vim user, so I am familiar with sed and have used it in the past. But there are still a few things that I searched around for quick answers. So I’ll record noteworthy points here. I couldn’t remember how many times my own past blog entries helped me over the years. And I hope you’ll find this helpful too! …

The wild and crazy guys over at S&T Geotronics, James Sanderson and Marc Tessier, have decided to go full tilt with a Kickstarter version of their DIY Open Enigma Project.  For those who missed the fanfare last year, they were featured on Instructables showing how to build an Arduino-based encryption machine that works exactly like a WWII era Enigma.  You know, the thing that Alan friggin' Turing and his team at …

There is a good article over at Re-Code by ex-Microsoft VP Steven Sinofsky called "The Four Stages of Disruption".  It describes the evolution of products and markets through disruption, drawing from Sinofsky's own insights and also building on the work of Everett Rogers ("The Diffusion of Innovations") and Clayton Christensen ("The …

No one enjoys downtime. It reduces productivity and creates lost work, along with frustrated customers who depend on your services! Outages should not be considered business as usual. GenieDB grew from this frustration. Now with the launch of our new online Management Console, companies can experience the benefits of GenieDB’s geo-distributed, continuously available MySQL with just a few mouse clicks.

We’re excited to announce the availability of our simple and easy to use Management Console for automatic database administration. This includes backup processes, tuning and updates. With our globally distributed MySQL-as-a-service, our customers can launch MySQL database that remains available, and provide fast application response times – from anywhere in the world.

“Our management console makes it easy to take advantage of the benefits of GenieDB’s MySQL-as-a-Service,” said Cary Breese, CEO of GenieDB. …

Last year’s AWS re: Invent conference was described by many as one of the best technology conferences of 2012. This year, we’re pleased to be a sponsor and exhibitor at the event and will be heading over to Las Vegas from November 12-15.

Visit us at AWS re: Invent, booth #1205, and meet with the GenieDB team. We will be demonstrating our new globally distributed MySQL-as-a-Service, GenieDB’s scalable, DBaaS, which allows organizations of any size to build web-scale applications that gain the benefits of geographic database distribution. GenieDB offers continuous availability during regional cloud outages and better application response times for globally distributed users. 

“Unlike many other database solutions, GenieDB enables developers to meet the challenges of cloud environments without having to give up critical database …

I will change my host provider within a month. I’ve been using Midphase for several years and have decided to use Linode as my next virtual private service provider. I will move this site there in the next few weeks. This will be my first time moving a domain and I hope the transfer will be smooth without too much down time. After all, I know my readers worldwide are hanging on to every word I type and deserve a site that runs 24 by 7

Since I will have total control of this host, I decided to use Tengine, a great fork of the Nginx web/proxy server. Here is my note on how to compile and config Tengine on Debian/Ubuntu, and then setup WordPress. During my study and testing, the following sites are pretty helpful.

• Nginx installation on Ubuntu 12 …

We’ve all been through downtime at some point and deplore the lost work and productivity that comes with it. And the only thing worse than server downtime is having to report that downtime to frustrated customers who are depending on your service for their business.

Yesterday, AWS server issues meant downtime for highly trafficked sites Instagram, Vine, Airbnb, and IFTTTA. According to AWS’s health dashboard, the company’s North Virginia data center may be to blame.

The fact is, any cloud system is subject to outages, from Yahoo Mail to Microsoft BPOS and VMware; however, outages aren’t and shouldn’t be business as normal.

While we never wish for anyone to experience downtime, when stories like AWS hit the …

How can this be? I am shocked. I have looked at query plans, confirmed indexes, checked handler status variables after query execution to figure out what MySQL is up to, and I don’t think there is anything wrong with it. MySQL is using the right index, using ICP, Batched Key Access. Basically, everything that we can throw at it. I even tried MariaDB and it used the new Batched Hash Join. Same result. Postgres is done in 150ms and MySQL 5.6 takes 3s!

We had a customer who was migrating from Postgres to MySQL approach us about a slow running query. Here’s the situation. They have a fleet of cars, which are loaned out to customers for short periods of time. The cars have sensors that report mileage periodically. They want to figure out which customer drove how many miles during a certain time period. Easy enough, right?

The cust_car table (25K rows) captures which customer had which car and what was the odometer reading when it was …

This week, we announced the launch of GenieDB cloud-hosted Globally Distributed MySQL-as-a-Service, our scalable, highly available database-as-a-service (DBaaS).

When I start recounting the many benefits of this new automated platform to build web-scale applications, I fear I might sound one of those late-night infomercials…

“But wait, if you act now, you’ll get all the amazing benefits of geographical database distribution, including: continuous availability during regional outages (whether datacenter or cloud failure, be it hurricane, earthquake or other natural disaster). And that’s not all! You also get better application response time for globally distributed users.”

While our product won’t melt away your waistline, serve as an amazing do-it-all “Omnitool,” or help you stop snoring, we get pretty fired up when we think about our customers who are …

Catching up on our reading today, we saw a blog post from Chris Stevens, the multi-faceted VP of Engineering at Traxo, technology consultant, and Full Stack developer. In his post, he notes some of the impressive new database technologies he’s seeing lately in tech blogs and on the conference circuit.

Chris says that when it makes sense he advises his clients to look at non-relational datatstores, but for a number of reasons he works with MySQL wherever possible. Many of his clients looking to run globally distributed applications often need to distribute the database across more than one data center (geo-distribution) for fault tolerance and localized performance.

“Globally distributed applications often require localized performance,” he said in his post. “We can do some work loading front-end assets from CDN …