Windows Server 2008 R2 Failover Clustering

Oracle has announced support for running MySQL on Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC); with so many people developing and deploying MySQL on Windows, this offers a great option to add High Availability to MySQL deployments if you don’t want to go as far as deploying MySQL Cluster.

This post will give a brief overview of how to set things up but for all of the gory details a new white paper MySQL with Windows Server 2008 R2 Failover Clustering is available – please give me any feedback. I will also be presenting on this at a …

Most analytical and BI databases have date dimension table(s). One frequently needs to generate and populate such data. I present a solution below for such data generation, written in Python. Please use different database drivers/modules to connect to your specific database server (MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, etc.) for data population.

Notes:

1. It takes 2 parameters, start date and end date, in YYYYMMDD format, inclusive. Extensive error checking is built in, but let me know if you have comments/suggestions;

2. The script produce a Python dictionary (associated array) and print out its content;

3. The output includes dayNumber: a day’s position in a year. For example, 2011-02-01 is the 32ed day in 2011, therefore its dayNumber is 32;

4. The output includes weekNumber: a week’s position in a year. The week number in year is based on ISO standard. From documentation: the ISO year consists of 52 or 53 …

OK, I was having too much fun in my last post on this subject, so I try again. Just to be safe i Uninstall MySQL Installer, reboot my machine, and download the Installer again. Installing it this time didn't make anything happen it seemed? No dialogs, no nothing? But it is back there in the Start menu at least... OK, Let's try that one...
Think think think.. Whammo:
Yes, I am aware this is running on Swedish Windows, but let's try it on a US Windows 7 installation....

Downloaded and tried it on this machine, and now the installer runs at least. The "configuration" step doesn't actually do much. The Connector/.NET installation still insists on not finding a download location at …

This was a sad day for me. I once, when I was at MySQL, was a big fan of a better installer for MySQL on Windows. Something that would install all you wanted on just Windows, in a way applicable for Windows and integrating with the appropriate Windows products. So installing MySQL would not just install MySQL, it would also install the Visual Studio plugin for MySQL, for example, if you so requested (and the installer might even be so smart so it could check if VS was installed, and then ask you politely if you wanted the plugin). The same goes for ODBC drivers, .NET drivers and what have you not.

Fact is, I had this idea a long time ago and was promoting it inside MySQL with my usual frenzy when I think I have a good idea, although I wasn't the first to have this idea.

So, now, after all these years, and I have even left MySQL since, this Installer is soon ready for prime time, MySQL Installer is at it's last RC before …

It happens that sometimes you need to access a remote box which supports ssh key authentication. Recently I was trying to reproduce a bug related to SSH public key authentication, so here I would like to share some of my experience.

There will be no explanation of the public key authentication itself here, rather the actual setup and steps to have a public key auth for Windows(client) -> Linux(server) working. Why Windows you would ask? Because interactions for Linux->Linux and for Mac OS X -> Linux simply work using the Unix way, while for Windows you may need some extra actions to do.

Setup

What I had at endpoints:

• Linux –

Ubuntu 11.04, sshd is set up to deny password auth.
Windows – well, it is an XP SP3 i386 box. MySQL Workbench 5.2.34+ is installed

First of all I created an encrypted pair of RSA keys, …

I had trouble getting Perl DBI and DBD-mysql on Windows in the past. In addition, on Windows 64-bit, you sometimes see recommendations of using 32-bit Perl.

Today I got to test the latest 64-bit ActiveState Perl distro for Windows, version 5.12.3.1204. I tested it on Windows 2008 R2 64-bit. I am happy to report that it works. I am not categorically recommend FOR the installation of 64-bit Perl on Windows, though.

Here are the steps:
1. Get the ActiveState Perl 64-bit package for Windows and install it, following all the default options;
2. On command prompt, do:
cd c:\perl64\bin
ppm install DBI
ppm install DBD-mysql

I then tested against both Oracle’s MySQL 5.5 Community Server and MariaDb’s 5.2.7 on Windows with MaatKit’s mk-table-checksum to confirm. And it worked …

The MySQL Developer Tools team is pleased to announce the next release of it’s flagship product, MySQL Workbench, version 5.2.34. This is a maintenance release containing 100 bug fixes; ranging from stability improvements on all supported platforms – including some that prevented startup in certain environments – to minor but significant usability corrections.

As always, we want to thank everyone for the great feedback we have received. This helps us to continuously improve the functionality and stability of MySQL Workbench – we appreciate all your ideas for improving MySQL Workbench.  Please keep sending us your ideas!

MySQL Workbench 5.2 GA

• Data Modeling
• Query (replaces the old MySQL Query Browser)
• Administration (replaces the old MySQL Administrator)

Please get your copy from our Download site. Sources and binary packages are available for several platforms, …

Update:

Commenter MarkR made a great point: if possible, use some packaging tools, to try to maintain proper dependencies, to the extent that is possible. Install from the source should be Plan B. So, try yum install MySQL-python first.

This is mostly for my own future reference. It’ll be icing on the cake if it helps you!

This is geared for CentOS or Red Hat. Use apt-get or other packaging tools for different flavours of Linux.

1. Get Python module setuptools called easy_install. I love easy_install, by the way, sort of like CPAN for Perl modules;
2. To install MySQLdb package, you would think easy_install MySQLdb would do. But that is not the case. I hope the developer would fix that. Instead, you need:

easy_install MySQL-python

3. If you have build errors, you may need:
yum install python-devel or yum …

MyQuery, the ad-hoc query and scripting tool for MySQL, as always running on Windows, supporting servers on any platform, is now available in version 3.4.2. This version has a few minor bug-fixes in the "Break long lines" plugin that cleans up SQL text, and also a few additions to this plugin.
I have not heard of any issues with MyQuery itself since I released 3.4.1, but I will not take the 3.4 version into GA until I have fixed a few more things in the "Break long lines" plugin to turn it into a more full-features SQL beautifier with a lot more features than now.
Until then though, 3.4.2 is what you want, and the Compact Spaces option in the Break Long Lines plugin that is added with this release, should provide useful.

In addition to all this, if you want to meet up and discuss this tool, then I am at your service at the MySQL Usre Conference coming up next week.

Best regards
Anders Karlsson

The MySQL developer tools team announces the next release of it’s flagship product, MySQL Workbench – version 5.2.33. This is a maintenance release only which corrects some problems we didn’t cover in last release. It contains fixes for 7 bugs or enhancement requests.

As always, we want to thank everyone for the great feedback we have received. This helps us to continuously improve the functionality and stability of MySQL Workbench – we appreciate all your ideas for improving MySQL Workbench.  Please keep sending us your ideas!

MySQL Workbench 5.2 GA

• Data Modeling
• Query (replaces the old MySQL Query Browser)
• Administration (replaces the old MySQL Administrator)

Please get your copy from our Download site. Sources and binary packages are available for several platforms, including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

…