It seems these days if anyone knows anything about tuning InnoDB, it’s that you MUST tune your innodb_buffer_pool_size to 80% of your physical memory. This is such prolific tuning advice, it seems engrained in many a DBA’s mind.  The MySQL manual to this day refers to this rule, so who can blame the DBA?  The question is: does it makes sense?

What uses the memory on your server?

Before we question such advice, let’s consider what can take up RAM in a typical MySQL server in their broad categories.  This list isn’t necessarily complete, but I think it outlines the large areas a MySQL server could consume memory.

• OS Usage: Kernel, running processes, filesystem cache, etc.
• MySQL fixed usage: query cache, InnoDB …

I thought it was worth a moment to reiterate on the new Performance Schema related defaults that MySQL 5.7.7 brings to the table, for various reasons.

For one, most of you might have noticed that profiling was marked as deprecated in MySQL 5.6.7. So it is expected that you invest into learning more about Performance Schema (and Mark’s sys schema!).

Second, there are lots of virtual environments and appliances out there running Community Edition MySQL where Performance Schema can be a useful tool for analyzing performance. Thus, expect to see more articles about using PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA and SYS_SCHEMA from us!

Third, we have more and more junior readers who might benefit from light reads such as this.

The new defaults that I wanted to highlight are mentioned in the …

The other day I was discussing new features of MySQL 5.7 with a Percona Support customer. After that conversation, I thought it would be a good idea to compile list of important features of MySQL 5.7. The latest MySQL 5.7.6 release candidate (RC) is out and is packed with nice features. Here’s a list of some MySQL 5.7 key features.

Replication Enhancements:

• One of the top features in MySQL 5.7 is multi-source replication. With multi-source replication you can point multiple master server’s to slave so limitation of slave having only one master is lift off. There is nice blog post written by my colleague on multi-source replication you will find useful.
• …

I accidentally stumbled upon this Stack Overflow question this morning:

I am wondering if there is any difference in regards to performance between the following:

SELECT ... FROM ... WHERE someFIELD IN(1,2,3,4);
SELECT ... FROM ... WHERE someFIELD between  0 AND 5;
SELECT ... FROM ... WHERE someFIELD = 1 OR someFIELD = 2 OR someFIELD = 3 ...;

It is an interesting question because there was no good way to answer it when it was asked in 2009. All of the queries resolve to the same output in EXPLAIN. Here is an example using the sakila schema:

mysql> EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM film WHERE film_id BETWEEN 1 AND 5\G
mysql> EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM film WHERE film_id IN (1,2,3,4,5)\G
mysql> EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM film WHERE film_id =1 or film_id=2 or film_id=3 or film_id=4 or film_id=5\G
********* 1. row *********
           id: 1 …

In July 2014, I wrote that we were working on a new native InnoDB data dictionary to replace MySQL's legacy frm files.

This is quite possibly the largest internals change to MySQL in modern history, and will unlock a number of previous limitations, as well as simplify a number of failure states for both replication and crash recovery.

With MySQL 5.7 approaching release candidate (and large changes always coming with risk attached) we decided that the timing to try to merge in a new data dictionary was just too tight. The data dictionary development is still alive and well, but it will not ship as part of MySQL 5.7.

So please stay tuned for updates... and thank you for using MySQL!

MySQL 5.7.7 was recently released (it is the latest MySQL 5.7, and is the first “RC” or “Release Candidate” release of 5.7), and is available for download here and here.

As for the fixes/changes, there are quite a few again, which is expected in an early RC release.

The main highlights for me were (though the enhancements, and potentially impactful changes, are definitely not limited to this list):

• Optimizer Note: It is now possible to provide hints to the optimizer within individual SQL statements, which enables finer control over statement execution plans than can be achieved using the optimizer_switch system variable. Optimizer hints are specified as /*+ … */ comments following the SELECT, INSERT, REPLACE, …

MySQL 5.7.6 was recently released (it is the latest MySQL 5.7, and is the “m16” or “Milestone 16” release), and is available for download here and here.

As for the fixes/changes, there are quite a few (the official release was again split into 3 separate emails), which is expected in a “milestone” release.

The main highlights for me were (though the enhancements, and potentially impactful changes, are definitely not limited to this list):

• Incompatible Change: The CREATE USER and ALTER USER statements have additional account-management capabilities. Together, they now can be used to fully establish or modify authentication, SSL, and resource-limit properties, as well as manage password expiration and account locking and …

Madrid MySQL Users Group is having a Meetup this afternoon, Wednesday, 13th May at 19:00. I will be presenting (in Spanish) a quick summary of Percona Toolkit and also offering a summary of the new features in MySQL 5.7 as the release candidate has been announced and we don’t expect new functionality. This is also … Continue reading MMUG12: Talk about Percona Toolkit and the new features of MySQL 5.7

The post MMUG12: Talk about Percona Toolkit and the new features of MySQL 5.7 first appeared on Simon J Mudd's Blog.

Today, oCERT published advisory 2015-003 describing a TLS vulnerability in MySQL and derivative products.  The content isn’t exactly news – it is documented legacy behavior and the subject of an earlier blog post describing how MySQL Server 5.7 solves the problem.  That said, the efforts of Duo Security are certainly appreciated and welcomed – it provides a meaningful context to discuss how to properly harden existing MySQL 5.5 and 5.6 deployments, as well as frame a discussion on potential changes in these versions to increase security.

Vulnerability

The vulnerability described in the advisory relies on the legacy behavior of the client …

About 2 weeks ago Oracle published the MySQL 5.7.7-labs-json version which includes a very interesting feature called “Generated columns” (also know as Virtual or Computed columns). MariaDB has a similar feature as well: Virtual (Computed) Columns.

The idea is very simple: if we store a column

`FlightDate` date

in our table we may want to filter or group by year(FlightDate), month(FlightDate) or even dayofweek(FlightDate). The “brute-force” approach: use the above Date and Time MySQL functions in the query; however it will prevent MySQL from using an index (see below). Generated columns will allow you to declare a “Virtual”, non-stored column …