The MySQL engineering team constantly works to bring you huge performance improvements with each new release of MySQL. Here are four ways to help you get the most from these improvements

Tap into Sveta Smirnova's MySQL performance expertise on October 1st 2013 at 10am Central European Time, by attending the 1-day virtual seminar, Troubleshooting MySQL Performance with Sveta Smirnova. Sveta starts with basics, working towards more advanced cases that DBAs usually need years of experience to identify or solve. Click here to learn more about this seminar and to register for the event.

The …

The pace of MySQL engineering has been pretty brisk for the last few years. I think that most of the credit is due to Oracle, but one should not ignore Percona, Monty Program, Facebook, Google, Twitter, and others. Not only are these organizations (and the individuals I haven’t mentioned) innovating a lot, they’re providing pressure on Oracle to keep up the improvements, too. But if you look back over the last few years, MySQL is still functionally a lot like it used to be.

A loadbalancer is used in many MySQL setups. Loadbalancing can be done with an hardware loadbalancer or with software. Software solutions tend to be a fair bit cheaper.

Loadbalancing is often implemented as an extra layer: The application connects to the loadbalancer via the network and the loadbalancer connects to the database via the network. The loadbalancing can be implemented on the application machines to get rid of the extra layer, this is better for latency (each layer adds latency) and as each application server has it's own loadbalancer it can also remove bottlenecks. The drawback are that you'll lose a single point of control and with multiple loadbalancers the number of health check queries will probably increase. The two-layer setup is often used with Connector/J and haproxy.

There are simple and more intelligent loadbalancers. There are loadbalancers which can split read and write traffic for example. Of …

In the MySQL team, we’ve been discussing removing the non-standard \N synonym for NULL. For Example:

mysql> SELECT NULL is \N;
+------------+
| NULL is \N |
+------------+
|          1 |
+------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> INSERT INTO tablea VALUES (3, \N);
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> SELECT * FROM tablea WHERE b IS \N;
+---+------+
| a | b    |
+---+------+
| 3 | NULL |
+---+------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

The use of “\N” in files loaded with LOAD DATA INFILE or created with SELECT INTO OUTFILE will be unaffected by this change and continue to be supported.

The two options we’ve laid out are:

Option #1:

• Add deprecation warnings in MySQL 5.6 and MySQL 5.7
• Remove in MySQL 5.8

Option #2:

• Add deprecation warnings in MySQL …

In the MySQL team, we’ve been discussing removing the non-standard \N synonym for NULL. For Example:

mysql> SELECT NULL is \N;
+------------+
| NULL is \N |
+------------+
|          1 |
+------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> INSERT INTO tablea VALUES (3, \N);
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> SELECT * FROM tablea WHERE b IS \N;
+---+------+
| a | b    |
+---+------+
| 3 | NULL |
+---+------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

The use of “\N” in files loaded with LOAD DATA INFILE or created with SELECT INTO OUTFILE will be unaffected by this change and continue to be supported.

The two options we’ve laid out are:

Option #1:

• Add deprecation warnings in MySQL 5.6 and MySQL 5.7
• Remove in MySQL 5.8

Option #2:

• Add deprecation warnings in MySQL 5.6.
• Remove in MySQL 5.7

…

Last may I wrote about Reestablishing a MySQL Tradition where we used to have shirts just for those who contributed code to MySQL. Unfortunately that tradition was not kept during various transitions. But Antony Curtis

This is Antony Curtis in the original Community Contributor shirt

impressed me at a conference with his shirt and so the Community Team started the process of getting shirts for our contributors. Today I am proud to announce the first shirt has been ordered and in the post to Antony.

So if you have contributed to MySQL, have an OCA on file, AND are going to be at …

This week we continue our series on MySQL Utilities, talking about replication and failover tools. Ear Candy is a gotcha with poor GRANT syntax that MySQL does not give warnings about, and At the Movies is an open forum from the SkySQL Solutions Day a few months ago.

Part 1 of MySQL Utilities
Part 2 of MySQL Utilities
Part 4 of MySQL Utilities
Part 5 of MySQL Utilities

MySQL Utilities part 3
mysqlfailover

read more

Most "SQL And Its Sequels" blog posts will be from me, Peter Gulutzan, formerly Software Architect for MySQL then Sun then Oracle. Most posts will be about MySQL / MariaDB and SQL standards -- my expertises. But I learned about other products during my recent stint at HP, and I like to look at other open-source DBMSs as well.
The RSS feed is http://ocelot.ca/blog/feed/ and posts will occur once or twice a week.

Copyright (c) 2013 by Ocelot Computer Services Inc. All rights reserved.

With organizations gearing up to the new round of technologies as the database vendors announce newer versions and features, the bloggers are busy covering all of those details with practical advice. This Log Buffer Edition brings you that advice.

Oracle:

Marco Vigelini has written one post regarding creation of a pluggable database PDB using the files of the seed PDB$SEED and his second post describes how to create a pluggable database by unplugging an existing PDB and plugging it into another container.

…

The Sept. 8 deadline is looming to submit your speaker proposals for Percona Live London 2013′s conference breakout sessions and tutorial sessions.

In addition to fame (and dare I say fortune?), if selected as a speaker by our amazing conference committee, you’ll receive a complimentary, full-conference pass.

Some call for papers pointers:

• Breakout session submissions should be detailed to clearly indicate the topic and content of your session proposal for the conference committee. Sessions will be 50 minutes in length including Q&A.
• We are particularly interested in proposals that fit into the following likely conference Tracks: Developing Applications, Database Administration, Trends in Architecture and …