Another slightly disappointing article regarding MySQL, this one from a printed magazine. Below are my comments to the editor of Linux Format. The Dear Editor is an email link should others wish to make any comments. (Previous article comments What makes your blood boil?, Review of Database Magazine Article - ?The Usual Suspects?)

Dear Editor,

I’ve recently subscribed to LXF, and have generally been very happy with the content in past months. I’m disappointed in your recent LXF77 article “Harness a database” Pg 57. Being a strong MySQL supporter, your article includes a number of practices which are less then ideal, and especially for the newly initiated, overly complicated when simplier alternatives exist.

I am happy to see that you had the …

As part of my A call to arms! post about a month ago, I’ve had a number of unofficial comments of support. In addition, I’ve also been approached to assist in the completion of a MySQL Transactional support engine. More information on the PBXT engine will be forthcoming soon by it’s creator.

Anyway, I’ve taken on the responsiblity of assisting in testing this new storage engine. This will also give me the excuse of being able to pursue some other ideas about the performance of differing storage engines for differing tables in business circumstances, such as MyIsam verses InnoDB in a highly OLTP environment. Part of testing will be ensure ACID conformance in varying situations and multi-concurrency use. Of course the ability to also do performance and load testing would be a obvious extension.

Considering how I’m going to benchmark is an interesting …

I made reference previously to Testing/Trialing new MySQL Releases using VMWare.

Well, I’ve just about completed my own Image for the lastest MySQL 5.0 (given I’m now running MySQL 5.1). I’m interested in sharing my experiences, and even providing some images for users if there is any demand out there.

What I’ve decided on is to use the VMWare supplied Browser Appliance which is Ubuntu 5.10. The great thing is the image autoboots into graphical mode, auto logins and loads a browser. My goal now is to get a suitable startup page describing the MySQL environment, links, manual etc.

The only requirements to run would be the …

Have a look at InnoDB. Well, ok your lazy, so here’s a screen print below.
Plastered thoughout the top section is the word MySQL. It’s in the core banner blurb, there’s a logo, and even links to the MySQL Documentation. And right in the middle of all this is “Innobase OY is an Oracle Company”, with the standard Oracle Logo.

So my question would be, is this a good thing or a bad thing from a MySQL advertising perspective?
Does it help or hinder MySQL?
Does it show Oracle as being in partnership with MySQL? Is this good for MySQL to increase it’s exposure into the Oracle world?
Does inclusion of InnoDB now within Oracle traffic and links improve exposure to MySQL within search engines?

Frankly, I’m a little surprised that Oracle Legal hasn’t got onto this, I’m sure somewhere there would …

Some recent posts regarding Oracle (See Smart moves by MySQL AB and Larry Ellison still doesn’t understand open source) leads me to put in my 2 cents worth.

My background I’m sure like a lot of experienced MySQL people is in Oracle, and indeed in Ingres before that (starting in 1988). I have also worked for a number of years at Oracle Corporation. Ironically I started as their resident Ingres Specialist, in an international research project of DMS (Design & Migration Services) of re-engineering Ingres applications into an Oracle Designer Repository some 10 years ago in 1996. I of course moved into a number of other Oracle roles for clients following that. I still retain some …

With Oracle Corporation purchasing InnoBase, the company providing the InnoDB Storage Engine, and now reliable rumors of the acquisition of SleepyCat, the BDB Storage Engine, both key transactional storage engines for MySQL are effectively owned by a competitor.

While the is a strange and probably unchartered territory for both organisations, I’m personally concerned. I use InnoDB extensively, however if there was a comparable alternative within MySQL I’d consider switching out of principle. Is Oracle purchasing these organisations a bad thing? We don’t know. That’s the problem. While MySQL will undoubtly continue to provide these storage engines as part of the MySQL Database I believe a call to arms is needed.

It’s true that Oracle helped more general adoption of Linux …

Last year saw a record number of acquisitions by Oracle Corporation. Of note was in October 2005 InnoBase (Read Press Release) which had a direct relationship with MySQL providing the InnoDB Storage Engine. It’s too early to tell what the impact to MySQL will be if any.

I’ve been in Singapore, and have not read any news in the past few days, but all information I’m receiving from those collegues in the know is that Sleepycat Software (the company behind Berkley DB, and the MySQL BDB Storage Engine) is now firmly in the sites of Oracle Acquisition. The rumors of JBoss is also definitely on the …

Yesterday I ran into an old collegue that now runs quite a successful computer store chain and highly successful web store here in Australia. Long story short he was having some MySQL problems, so I offered to pass my eye over it. Now, given that they had some data corruption in stock levels not being correct (e.g. getting to an inventory count of -1), my first split second thought was inappropiate transaction management.

In thinking last night, what would I do as part of auditing an existing MySQL Installation and application quickly for reference and also to highlight issues etc, assuming I would have no access to any administrators or developers.

So what would you do? I made some preliminary notes, here’s the full account of what I did do.

Audit Steps

OS Specifics

$ mkdir /tmp/arabx
$ cd /tmp/arabx
# keep a quick copy of stuff
$ script
# Linux generals
$ hostname
$ uname -a
$ uptime
$ …

These are my first impressions of MySQL WorkBench 1.0.1. Rant and rave you may say, but a new user, or an experienced modeller would probably observe these points. Also, given that (with a poll?) I suspect a good number of users will be previous DBDesigner users, some level of functionality that may not be considered initially in a new product, should be considered for this migration path of legacy users.

I’ll take the time to review the Forums adding my points, and review Bug System but for now, just blogging is easier.

Conclusion

Note: Generally a conclusion is at the bottom, but I’d suspect most readers will switch off …

MySQL V5.0 has been out for a while; it addresses most of the major objections people have had about ?MySQL is not a ?real? database?. With support for triggers, stored procedures, views and XA transactions, I think MySQL has a feature set that will enable people to easily migrate to MySQL. At this point in time, InnoDB is the only storage engine choice for applications that require transactions, and this is still a reasonable choice in most cases.

The only thing that?s still missing from MySQL is resolution of the problems created by Oracle’s acquisition of Innobase Oy, the developers of the InnoDB storage engine. I previously wrote a post about the Oracle Innobase issues; have a look here. Oracle’s acquisition of Innobase Oy is a problem because Innobase Oy has a proprietary transactionally consistent backup tool that Oracle could withhold to cause pain for MySQL customers. …