MySQL 5.6 Global Transaction Identifier - Use case: Failover
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The long lasting MySQL replication failover issue is cured. MySQL 5.6 makes master failover easy, PECL/mysqlnd_ms assists with the client/connection failover. Compared to the past this is a significant step towards improving MySQL replication cluster availability, eleminating the need to use 3rd party tools in many cases. The slides illustrate the basic idea, as blogged about before.

There is not much to say …

MySQL Replication is sometimes critizied for being asynchronous and having slaves that lag behind. True! However, sometimes slaves can be used safely and reliably for read-your-writes. Its easy for PHP MySQL users. All the magic is in the driver. As of yesterday, the development version of PECL/mysqlnd_ms 1.3.0-alpha supports not only a client-side global transaction ID emulation but also the global transaction identifier feature of MySQL 5.6.4-m8.

Read-your-writes (session consistency) with MySQL Replication

A global transaction identifier can be understood as a sequence number for a transaction. The sequence number is incremented whenever a write transaction is performed on a MySQL replication master. Slaves replicate the transaction ID. After a client has executed a write on the master he can obtain a global …

Cache all queries which match a schema pattern is one of the few visible feature additions to PECL/mysqlnd_qc 1.1, the client-side query cache plugin for the mysqlnd library. As usual, this client-side cache is mostly transparent, works with all PHP MySQL APIs (mysql, mysqli, PDO_MySQL) and, of course, supports various storage backends including Memcache, process memory, SQLite, user-defined and more. Please, find details in the quickstart.

Setting a cache condition

Caching only selected queries is something that could be done in 1.0 already, for example, using a callback. What’s new is that filtering is built-in to 1.1. The new feature is straigth forward to use.

mysqlnd_qc_set_cache_condition( …

Why read stale data from an asynchronous MySQL replica (slave)? Fetch it from a local cache instead! Good for the clusters overall load, good for your applications performance. And, possible with PECL/mysqlnd_ms 1.3, the replication and load balancing plugin for PHP MySQL users.

The idea is simple

Any application using asynchronous MySQL replication must be capable of handling stale results read from a slave (replica) that is lagging behind the master. The quality of service that the application needs from the database cluster is low. If an application explicitly states the minimum service quality it needs, the underlying systems can adopt to it. That’s a cool thing, because the underlying systems don’t need to do more work than necessary. In the case of a PHP MySQL user, the first underlying system is the database driver library, which is mysqlnd.

Tell mysqlnd …

Is it worth the efforts to cache the results of a MySQL query at the client? In most cases the answer is: try it, measure it! Install the development version of the mysqlnd query cache plugin, which can be used with PDO_MySQL, mysqli and mysql. Set three PHP directives and find the answer in a log file.

While updating the query cache plugin to support PHP 5.4, the latest versions of APC and Memcached for cache storage, I virtually stumbled upon an undocumented feature I had long forgotten. The plugin can periodically dump statistics into a log file. The plugin collects tons of statistics and …

New in the PHP manual: a quickstart for the mysqlnd query cache plugin. PECL/mysqlnd_qc, the mysqlnd query cache plugin, is transparent and ease to use. But, how? Some pointers have been given in assorted presentations, here on my blog and in some, few examples from the manual. Fixed. You can now browse a quickstart to gain a quick overview.

• Architecture and Concepts
• Setup
• Setting the TTL
• …

New in the PHP manual: a mysqli quickstart. You are new to PHP but you know how to code, you know SQL, you know relational databases and MySQL? Then, I hope, this is for you. All you need is a quick overview on the concepts? The rest is in the reference section! Here you go.

The quickstart contains:

• Dual procedural and object-oriented interface:
  something pioneerd by MySQL when PHP learned OOP at 5.0 times.
• Connections: how, options, persistent/pooled connections.
• Executing statements: buffered, …

We are giving PECL/mysqlnd_qc a second chance. PECL/mysqlnd_qc is a query cache plugin for mysqlnd. It can cache any query issued by any PHP MySQL extension using storage handler for process memory, APC, Memcache and SQLlite. Its default invalidation strategy is Time to Live (TTL). Using a more sophisticated invalidation strategy is possible. Of course, its transparent to use and inherits all the other advantages of a driver based approach.

Award-winning technology: Oxid loves the query cache
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Albeit quite powerful the plugin came late and is faced with stiff competition from …

The MySQL part of the PHP reference manual is currently being restructured: new landing and overview page, mysqli quickstart prepared. Ten years ago, there was the mysql extension and that was it. Today, beginners are faced with three MySQL APIs/extensions, two libraries and more than three library plugins. MySQL support by PHP has never been better. But, where to start: web search for tutorials, a book? The results one gets tend to be flawed: outdated, incomplete, flawed… Thus, the update.

A landing and overview page

The MySQL documentation staging server already shows the new landing and overview page "MySQL Drivers and Plugins". Its introduction makes the PHP reference manuals "Vendor Specific Database Extensions" section less cluttered by grouping all MySQL information under this new overview page.

Under …

A single MySQL server is a single point of failure. A single MySQL server can only be scaled vertically by increasing hardware size, which has its limits. That’s two good reasons to migrate from a single MySQL server to a cluster of MySQL servers. However, in cloudy white christmas times, few appreciate the extra work that using a cluster causes. For example, MySQL connections must be load balanced. Please, find a comparison of different load balancing architectures in the short presentation. Choose the one that’s best for you - maybe it is PECL mysqlnd_ms 1.2, the mysqlnd replication and load balancing plugin…

Load Balancing for PHP and …