MySQL Connector/Java 5.1.38 was released earlier this week, and it includes a notable improvement related to secure connections.  Here’s how the change log describes it:

When connecting to a MySQL server 5.7 instance that supports TLS, Connector/J now prefers a TLS over a plain TCP connection.

This mirrors changes made in 5.7 to the behavior of MySQL command-line clients and libmysql client library.  Coupled with the streamlined/automatic generation of TLS key material to ensure TLS availability in MySQL Server 5.7 deployments, this is an important step towards providing secure communication in default deployments.

…

MySQL Connector/Java supports connection attributes since version 5.1.25.  This projects useful metadata about the client environment into the database, where MySQL administrators can query PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA tables to remotely survey application deployment environments.  One useful piece of information exposed is the version and vendor of the JVM in use by the client.  This very short blog demonstrates how to get this information from PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA.

The metadata including the Java runtime environment version and vendor can be found in PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA.SESSION_CONNECT_ATTRS table.  Here’s the full contents of that table for a single connection from Connector/Java:

mysql> SELECT *
    -> FROM PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA.SESSION_CONNECT_ATTRS
    -> WHERE processlist_id = 31\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
  PROCESSLIST_ID: 31
       ATTR_NAME: _runtime_version
      ATTR_VALUE: …

Secure communications is a core component of a robust security policy, and MySQL Server 5.7.10 – the first maintenance release of MySQL Server 5.7 – introduces needed improvements in this area.  Support for TLS has been expanded from TLSv1.0 to include TLSv1.1 and TLSv1.2, default ciphers have been updated, and controls have been implemented allowing both server and client-side configuration of acceptable TLS protocol versions.  This blog post will describe the changes, the context in which these changes were made, note important differences in capabilities between Community and Enterprise versions, and outline future plans.

Context

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer)  was superseded by TLS ( …

Join Alexander Rubin, Principal Consultant, Percona as he provides an overview of MySQL 5.7 features. Wednesday, December 9, 2015 10:00AM PST (GMT -08:00).

MySQL® 5.7 is a great release that has a lot to offer, especially in the areas of development and replication. It provides many new optimizer features for developers, a much more powerful GIS function, and a high performance JSON data type – allowing for a more powerful store for semi-structured data. It also features a dramatically improved Performance Schema and Parallel and Multi-Source replication – allowing you to scale much further than ever before.

Primary …

Recently, I was working on a MySQL support ticket where a customer was facing an issue while transporting tablespace from MySQL 5.6 to MySQL 5.7.
After closely reviewing the situation, I saw that while importing tablespace they were getting errors such as:

ERROR 1808 (HY000): Schema mismatch (Table flags don't match, server table has 0x10 and the meta-data file has 0x1)

After some research, I found that there is a similar bug reported to MySQL for this issue (https://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=76142), but no solution is mentioned. I tested the scenario locally and found a solution …

Performance Schema has been with us for a while now. Over the years, it has gone a long way from being a curiosity disabled by default to becoming a sophisticated diagnostic tool you may want to enable permanently in your production database.
MySQL 5.7 introduced some exciting Performance Schema features and the first one I'm going to look at is the instrumentation for server memory usage. Have I Got Data For You MySQL 5.7.9 (GA) supports the following memory summary tables (per documentation) that let you look at server memory usage from different angles:

• "memory_summary_by_account_by_event_name" summarizes events for a given account.
• "memory_summary_by_host_by_event_name" summarizes events for a given host.
• "memory_summary_by_thread_by_event_name" summarizes events for a given thread and event name.
…

MySQL introduces several improvements related to partitioning. Most importantly, work has been done to move InnoDB towards native partitioning support, which not only "paves the way for better overall partitioning" (source) in the future but already comes with measurable performance benefits.
This article focuses on memory usage in heavily partitioned InnoDB databases.
Background Over the last few weeks I've been (un)lucky enough to work with several MySQL databases suffering from stability issues due to extreme memory pressure. All databases belonged to the same DBA team, who tend to apply complex partitioning schemes even to very small tables. Discussion as to whether or not this approach is correct is beyond the scope of this article but the situation encouraged …

It goes without saying that crash recovery of busy MySQL servers (and many other RDBMS for that matter) is not an extremely quick process. In MySQL context, one of the worst case scenarios is when the server is used for multi-tenant application hosting i.e. when the MySQL instance contains hundreds or thousands of schemas and (tens/hundreds of) thousands of tablespaces. In such scenario, the server may spend a considerable amount of time in the tablespace discovery phase, during which MySQL builds a mapping between tablespace IDs and names of actual tablespace files on disk.
MySQL 5.7 promises to put an end to tablespace discovery. The documentation lists the following improvements introduced in versions 5.7.5 and up:

• Elimination of file system scans prior to redo log application. The MLOG_FILE_NAME redo log …

The OPTIMIZE TABLE statement provides allows MySQL DBAs to reorganize physical table storage in order to achieve two main goals:

1. Improve IO efficiency for reads/writes against the table,
2. Reclaim unused storage space.

For InnoDB tables, OPTIMIZE is implemented via ALTER TABLE operation. This is true in all MySQL versions, however MySQL 5.7.4 introduced a change that may catch many users off guard and is therefore worth highlighting. Theory The InnoDB storage engine does not directly support OPTIMIZE. Instead, when a DBA invokes OPTIMIZE TABLE x, InnoDB executes ALTER TABE x FORCE. In MySQL versions prior to 5.7.4, OPTIMIZE is not an online operation i.e. the table is locked and DML operations against the table are not allowed until OPTIMIZE finishes.
MySQL 5.7.4 introduces a significant change around OPTIMIZE, namely the ALTER TABLE operation now uses  …

MySQL 5.7 has a lot of enhancements and new features. I summarized this list previously in this blog post.

Adding replication filters online is one of the MySQL 5.7 features described in this manual. However, I will describe and summarize a few examples in this blog post.

Filtering replication events is also known as Partial Replication. Partial replication can be done from the master or slave. Filtering events on the master server via …