The latest from the MySQL community

One of the many great new features included in MySQL 5.7 is the generated column. A generated column is a column in a table where the data is calculated for you, based on an expression that you provide.

To understand the benefits of using generated columns, let's consider a very simple example. Imagine that I want to find out how many new hires my organization had in the year 2000. Here's my table:

mysql> DESC employees; +------------+---------------+------+-----+---------+-------+ | Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra | +------------+---------------+------+-----+---------+-------+ | emp_no | int(11) | NO | PRI | NULL | | | birth_date | date | NO | | NULL | | | first_name | varchar(14) | NO | | NULL | | | last_name | varchar(16) | NO | | NULL | | | gender | enum('M','F') | NO | | NULL | | | hire_date | date | NO | | NULL | | +------------+---------------+------+-----+---------+-------+ 6 rows in set (#.## sec)

When we are hired for a MySQL performance audit, we are expected to review the MySQL configuration and to suggest improvements. Many people are surprised because in most cases, we only suggest to change a few settings even though hundreds of options are available. The goal of this post is to give you a list of some of the most critical settings.

We already made such suggestions in the past here on this blog a few years ago, but things have changed a lot in the MySQL world since then!

Before we start…

Even experienced people can make mistakes that can cause a lot of trouble. So before blindly applying the recommendations of this post, please keep in mind the following items:

• Change one setting at a time! This is the only way to estimate if a change is beneficial.
• Most …

MySQL performance can be increased in two ways, software optimization and hardware upgrades. While the previous articles have covered much of the software side of performance optimization, we are now going to focus on the hardware aspect. Does hardware help boost performance? Like software optimization, hardware upgrades for MySQL systems are based upon set goals for an organisation. The question is not what hardware would work best; rather a question of what hardware will help the organisation achieve an X goal. The answer is yes, hardware does boost performance, but there are a few caveats to this. There are cases such as organizations’ demands are fulfilled even with crappy hardware, and all they require is a performance boost on the software side. However, an organisation might have a goal plan for a major performance increase down the road, and …

This is just an update to let you know that the new SkySQL Training Schedule is now available online.

The schedule extends as far as September 2012.

There are courses in the Belgium, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden, and and the United States.

And some of the course titles include:

• Administering a MySQL® Database
• Developing Applications with the MySQL® Database
• Performance Tuning for the MySQL® Database
• High Availability for the MySQL® Database
• Administering MySQL® Cluster

You can read the full schedule here:

http://www.skysql.com/services/training/schedule?vdt=training_course_list|page_3

Amazon EC2 and cloud computing offer great promise for startups to ramp up their online presence quickly.  Navigate those challenges with an strong partner.  We bring 20 years experience to the table with each new client.

• Scaling Web Applications
• MySQL High Availability in Amazon EC2
• Amazon Multi-AZ Deployments
• Amazon RDS Deployments
• Migrating to Amazon EC2
• Migrating to MySQL
• Managing Backups and Disaster Recovery in the Cloud
• Horizontal Scalability of MySQL on EC2
• Horizontal Scalability on Cloud Hosted Servers
• Evaluating Cloud Providers
• Evaluating MySQL Distributions and Platforms
• Strong Customer Facing Skills
• Integrate Directly with Development Team
• Agile …

A number of developers look at SQL tuning hints as a way to performance tune queries. Where the best way to tune SQL code is not to use hints. Hints add high maintenance code and try to influence the Cost Based Optimizer which can have negative impacts in the future. What if the data distributions change or the optimizer adds new features in the future? The best way to tune SQL code is to

MySQL is continuing to grow at a rapid pace in the market place. Continued high growth areas for MySQL continue to include the web application, gaming and embedded systems space. For small and medium sized OLTP environments MySQL continues to increase in popularity. MySQL can have incredible scalability as long as it scales horizontally. However with today's hardware adding more CPU and

As MySQL continues to expand in the market place, I am seeing a common mistake new DBAs make. They are waiting too long to develop their performance tuning skills. Whenever I work with new DBAs I always tell them it is important to focus on three areas:Understand the architecture and how things work. It is not good to guess.Get very good at back up and recovery if you want to keep your job.Get

MySQL provides a number of different tools for tuning SQL statements. Some of the key SQL tuning tools include:EXPLAIN - Displays execution plans generated by the MySQL Cost Based Optimizer.Status Variables - Contains statistics on SQL run time activity.Profiling - Contains run time statistics on each phase in the execution of individual SQL statements.Main Phases in Processing a SQL

We are pleased to announce the release 1.0.15 of HoneyMonitor, our GUI for MySQL™ administration and monitoring.

In this release, available for immediate download, we have fixed some bugs without adding many new features.

We are working to release a RC version as soon as possible.

The following is the list of changes:

- New Features:

1. new menu entry Auditing / Reports / Edit Report’s Template / Custom Report.

- Improvements:

1. minor bugs fix and improvements in the Report Designer.

- Bugs Fix:

1. on Vista™, the Report Designer was losing the connection after …