The latest from the MySQL community

Hi again

It's time to announce the next Helsinki MySQL User Group which is on February 8 at 18:00. Venue is Solinor's meeting and sauna facilities in North Haaga: http://www.meetup.com/The-Helsinki-MySQL-User-Group/events/42163422/

By popular request, Monty will be sharing news about MariaDB, after which there is the usual food, beverages, sauna and socializing.

The organizers would really appreciate it if you could RSVP at the meetup request above. Last time the place was already packed and now with this kind of superstar speaker the hosts want to make sure they book an appropriate room and enough food. (Seems there's already 20+ going!)

See you there!

This post is just to show how easy it is to upgrade or migrate from MySQL to MariaDB.

I should begin by stating this article is geared more towards MySQL 5.1 and prior, as MySQL 5.5 users will likely want to wait until MariaDB 5.5 is available (which I believe will be in the near future).

As you may or may not know, there are actually 3 flavors of MariaDB currently: 5.1, 5.2, and 5.3.

All three are based off of the 5.1 MySQL code base, just 5.2 and 5.3 have further improvements over 5.1. So, that’s why I say this upgrade is “easy” and there’s no need to be afraid, especially for 5.1 users. But even if you were a 5.0 user, the upgrade to MySQL 5.1 compared to MariaDB 5.1 would not be any different. So, why not give it a go?

You’ll have all of the benefits from using MySQL, but also all of the added improvements from MariaDB and XtraDB+.

I like the fact you can “ease” into it. For instance, …

First of all, I wish you a happy new year.
Many things happened last year, it was really exciting to be involved in the MySQL ecosystem.
I hope this enthusiasm will be increased this year, up to you !

To start the year, I propose the MySQL[plus] Awards 2011
It will only take 5 minutes to fill out these polls.
Answer with your heart first and then with your experience with some of these tools or services.

Polls will be closed January 31, so, vote now !
For “other” answers, please,  let me a comment with details.

Don’t hesitate to submit proposal for tools or services in the comments.
And, please, share these polls !

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, …

FictionPress

Issues addressed:

• Support complex and efficient indexes at 100+ million rows.
• Predicable and consistent performance regardless of data size growth.
• Fast recovery.

Ensuring Predictable Performance at Scale

The Company:  FictionPress operates both FictionPress.com and FanFiction.net and is home to over 6 million works of fiction, with millions of writers/readers participating from around the world in over 30 languages

The Challenge: FictionPress offers a number of interactive features to its large user base. These …

Parts of the world are already celebrating Christmas Eve and it’s time to relax and spend time with family and friends. Even if you don’t celebrate Christmas this is when there is time for less work. Here are a few words to round off MariaDB’s current state and where it’s heading.

This year culminated in MariaDB 5.3.3, the release candidate of 5.3. This is a significant release that makes years of work available by default in the database server. Earlier releases still required features to be explicitly switched on, but thanks to thorough testing assuring the quality of the new functionality we have now enabled them. It’s still called a release candidate which means it’s ready for general usage, but we want more user feedback before calling it stable. Make yourself familiar with the MariaDB 5.3.3 release notes.

Most of the new features and …

MySQL::Sandbox 3.0.24 was released yesterday, with many new features. More than vanilla MySQLIf you have missed my previous announcement, here's the gist of it. MySQL Sandbox can now deal with tarballs from either Percona Server or MariaDB. The main difference after this change is that you can now create a directory called <PREFIX>5.5.16 and make_sandbox will recognize it as well as the plain 5.5.16.

$ make_sandbox --export_binaries --add_prefix=ps \
   Percona-Server-5.5.11-rel20.2-114.Darwin.i386.tar.gz  \
   -- --sandbox_directory=msb_ps5_5_11
unpacking Percona-Server-5.5.11-rel20.2-114.Darwin.i386.tar.gz
[…]
installing with the following …

We already blog a lot on temporary tables on disk, how this could be bad for your workload and should be avoid.  Each temporary table will open a file descriptor,  external kernel call and by nature a well know file system slow operation.

We can point this benchmark simulating a working mail server


Monitoring of such queries can be trace via the status of

created_tmp_disk_tables 
Evidence of what is happening watching many Aria or MyISAM tables created on disk :

/usr/sbin/lsof  | grep "mysql" | grep "#"
mysqld     1855     mysql 1658u      REG                8,1       8192    1505932 …

Limelight Networks

Issue addressed: Managing metadata at exabyte scale

Delivering Agile Storage in the Cloud with Billions of Assets

The Company: Founded in 2001, Limelight Networks, Inc (NASDAQ: LLNW) is an Internet platform and services company that integrates the most business-critical parts of the online content value chain. Limelight’s cloud-based services enable customers to profit from the shift of content and advertising to the online world, from the explosive growth of mobile and connected devices, and from the migration of IT applications and services to the cloud. More than 1,800 customers worldwide use Limelight’s massively scalable services to better engage audiences, optimize advertising, manage and monetize …

A year ago I posted a blog on The state of MySQL forks: co-operating without co-operating. (Also Giuseppe wrote about the topic at that time, and Peter Zaitsev covers it in his conference keynotes.) So I've been wondering if it would be good to write an update on the topic now, and in that case what to write.

read more

Just in time for the holidays, SkySQL has published new white papers to keep you occupied while dealing with holiday travel delays, waiting for your turkey to roast, or hiding from your in-laws! Download them, today:

• "Should I Migrate to Version 5.3 of the MariaDB Database?" - Written by Mark Riddoch, SkySQL's Senior Software Architect, this white paper looks at those features that have been added in the version 5.3 of the MariaDB™ database and compares them to what is available with version 5.5 of the MySQL® database. This white paper addresses the value that might be gained from migrating from version 5.5 of the MySQL database (or earlier) to version 5.3 of the MariaDB database.

• …