The latest from the MySQL community

1. Using MysQL as NoSQL -- 750,000+ qps on a commodity MySQL/InnoDB 5.1 server from remote web clients.
2. Making an SLR Camera from Scratch -- amazing piece of hardware devotion. (via hackaday.com)
3. Mac App Store Guidelines -- Apple announce an app store for the Macintosh, similar to its app store for iPhones and iPads. "Mac App" no longer means generic "program", it has a new and specific meaning, a program that must be installed through the App store and which has limited functionality …

This miniconf aims to cover many of the current methods of data storage and retrieval and attempt to bring order to the universe. We’re aiming to cover what various systems do, what the latest developments are and what you should use for various applications.

We aim for talks from developers of and developers using the software in question.

Aiming for some combination of: PostgreSQL, Drizzle, MySQL, XFS, ext[34], Swift (open source cloud storage, part of OpenStack), memcached, TokyoCabinet, TDB/CTDB, CouchDB, MongoDB, Cassandra, HBase….. and more!

Call for Papers open NOW (Until 22nd October).

SMAQ report sections

→ MapReduce

→ Storage

→ Query

→ Conclusion

"Big data" is data that becomes large enough that it cannot be processed using conventional methods. Creators of web search engines were among the first to confront this problem. Today, social networks, mobile phones, sensors and science contribute to petabytes of data created daily.

To meet the challenge of processing such large data sets, Google created MapReduce. Google's work and Yahoo's creation of the Hadoop MapReduce implementation has spawned an ecosystem of big data processing tools.

As MapReduce has grown in popularity, a stack for big data systems …

WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH GEO DATA?

Geo spatial indexes are what make this type of data valuable.  With shape and point data you can find relationships between object in our physical world.  How close is the lightning in the storm front?  What homes where hailed on? (WDT) What schools are in my city?  With a list of homes for sale, how fare are they from their nearest school?  What picture where take in this area. (TwitPic)

Lets start with a simple grid of coordinates by creating a table for it call geom, adding our data points in and out of our grid and then searching with a small bounding box. The grid looks like this.

What data is available?

GEO data is expensive to create, so has been created by governments.  In the past governments charged for this data.  In 1980 the USGS was charging $300 (usd) per county for Oklahoma GEO data. (I complained to my congressman.) Today, a quick Internet search turns up lots of free GIS data.

I was hoping to find a neat collection of basic GEO data.   It would be nice if there was one place you could get world political borders (Polygons), postal codes (Polygons) and  points of interest like hospitals and airports.  What you can find is lots of  lists, often collections of odd data created for a virility of complex political purpose.  For example, The Global Change Master Directory is a large list of data sources on earth …

In my business (weather) we use lots map based (Geo) information.  Almost every table has latitude and longitude. Working with this kind of data can be exciting and frustrating.  This should give you a quick start into GIS with MySQL.

“A geographic information system (GIS), or geographical information system, is any system that captures, stores, analyzes, manages, and presents data that are linked to location. In the simplest terms, GIS is the merging of cartography, statistical analysis, and database technology. GIS systems are used in cartography, remote sensing, land surveying, …

MySQL seems to be happy to convert types for you. Developers are rushed to complete their project and if the function works they just move on. But what is the costs of mixing your types? Does it matter if your are running across a million rows or more? Lets find out.

Here is what the programmers see.

mysql> select 1+1;
+-----+
| 1+1 |
+-----+
|   2 |
+-----+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> select "1"+"1";
+---------+
| "1"+"1" |
+---------+
|       2 |
+---------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

Benchmark

What if we do a thousand simple loops?  How long does the looping itself take?

The BENCHMARK() function executes the expression expr repeatedly count times. It may be used to time how …

There’s a real explosion of cloud platforms and management tools, it seems you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting one these days. In the commercial proprietary solutions space you have – CA’s 3Terra AppLogic, Enomaly, Nimbula, RightScale. In open source there are Eucalyptus, Cloud.com, Open Nebula and …

Your searching for how to create a join across two databases on two different servers and it can’t be done directly.   select  d1.a, d2.b from db1@server1 join db2@server2 where db1.c = db2.c; does not work.

You learn about federated databases.  The federated storage engine allows accesses data in tables of remote databases.  Now how do you make it work?

1) Check if the federated storage engine is supported.  Federation is OFF by default!

mysql> show engines;
+------------+---------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| Engine     | Support | Comment                                                        |
+------------+---------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| InnoDB     | YES     | Supports transactions, row-level locking, and foreign keys     |
| MyISAM     | DEFAULT | Default engine as of …

Do you have MyISAM tables you reload with new data?

Do your queries, using that table, get blocked because the table is locked?

Do the waiting queries create idle connections slowing down the table load?

Do you wish you could just replace the table?

Years ago I was told you can replace CSV tables by simply replacing the CSV file. I figured this would also be true of a MyISAM file and it is. I use this perl script to replace MyISAM tables forcast and current observation weather data. The processing and tables are created on another computer. Weather forecasting is CPU and database expensive. I then copy (rsync) the files to the production system and run this script.

#!/usr/bin/perl
################################################################################
################################################################################
# mg_hot_replace_table.pl - Hot Replace a MySQL table.
#
# 2010-05-01 …