As a consultant I often use the MySQL Reference Manual to provide additional information for clients. I am very happy to recognize the quality of the content in the MySQL documentation, but why is the searching of the manual so, so bad?

While reading the General Security Issues section of the MySQL 5.5 manual, I performed a search for “CREATE USER”. I was not asking for anything abstract, this is an actual SQL command. I was rather horrified to find that the results could not even list the appropriate manual page in the first page of results.

I am not an expert in full-text search, however it does not take a rocket scientist to realize that a SQL keyword, the title of a page, in the language of the current page (English) and the current version of the Manual (5.5) should be …

In my opinion, The Server Option and Variable Reference at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/mysqld-option-tables.html rates as my most important page. This is a consolidated index that enables a drill down to the Server Command Options, System Variables, Startup and replication specifics, as well as important information on default values and differences between versions including point releases.

However, there is another page not in the actual manual, but at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysqld-version-reference/en/mysqld-version-reference-optvar.html which is an Options/Variables reference akin to the Reference Manual, but includes a 5.x version matrix.

Recently I was asked about some options that had to be …

The MySQL documentation impresses me. I can’t recall a time when I didn’t find what I was looking for or that its details were lacking. Documenting a database server is difficult; the amount of information to organize and communicate clearly is staggering. I tasted that challenge when I helped update the Drizzle documentation, which was recently updated online.

I think Drizzle will become be a serious alternative or compliment to MySQL. Imho, Drizzle was until now held back by its documentation, or lack thereof, which created an insurmountable stumbling block for even clever DBAs. For example, Drizzle is largely comprised of plugins, but none of those plugins were documented until now.

I use the MySQL documentation as a goal, that to which the Drizzle documentation strives, not necessarily in style but in completeness. …

MySQL 5.6 proposes improved partition maintenance through "partition exchange". Even if not yet available, dbi services performed some tests on the MySQL Community Edition5.6.2 m5 release (still under Development).

At Percona, we’re now using sphinx for our documentation. We’re also using Jenkins for our  continuous integration. We have compiler warnings from GCC being parsed by Jenkins using the built in filters, but there isn’t one for the sphinx warnings.

Luckily, in the configuration page for Jenkins, the Warnings plugin allows you to specify your own filters. I’ve added the following filter to process warnings from sphinx:

For those who want to copy and paste: …

With OSCON in Portland under way (where LINBIT has a presence, of course), we are making three new documents available in the popular Tech Guides section of our web site.

• MySQL High Availability on the Pacemaker Cluster Stack is the definitive guide to setting up MySQL with DRBD on Pacemaker. A simple, step-by-step how-to which will have your highly available MySQL database up in no time.
• The DRBD Quick Reference has the most important DRBD …

In the #maria IRC channel the other day I fielded a question someone had about a DATETIME column where they wanted to SELECT by the year. The answer (which is probably obvious to many of you) is to use the YEAR() function like so:

select * from t1 where YEAR(d) = 2011;

(The above assumes the table is named “t1” and the DATETIME column is named “d“.)

In my reply I provided a link to the Date and Time Functions section of the AskMonty Knowledgebase, but when I looked at the entry for the …

After my last post title "Stop looking for Oracle and MySQL documentation: use the dbi services firefox add-ons!" Some of you asked me for firefox search add-ons for Oracle Fusion Middleware (http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17904_01/index.htm). This add-on will provide you a fast a reliable way to find easily what you are looking for in the official oracle documentation.

Are you often trying to find some functionalities into ORACLE 10gR2, ORACLE 11gR2 or MySQL documentation ? Of course each time you are looking for this documentation you find unofficial documentation which is never corresponding to the version you are looking for.. we have the solution, three firefox add-ons that will allow you to easily find the right official Oracle or MySQL documentation you are looking for.

I’ve just announced a rather large update to the Linux-HA documentation.

We now finally have a Developer’s Guide for OCF resource agent authors and contributors. If you want to write a new resource agent to bundle with your project, or plan to send a patch for an existing resource agent, then this guide is for you.

In addition, we’ve released a new version of the Linux HA User’s Guide, which is the definitive reference and handbook for Heartbeat users.

PDF versions of these are, as always, …