I’ve been working on revising my password policy scripts, and in the process, thought about the privileges required.  My first draft added tables to the mysql system database and leveraged the root@localhost account.  I’m looking to lock that down for the next iteration.  It’s easy to move the tables and procedures out of the mysql system database into a new password_policy database, but what to do about the use of the root account?

Ideally we would use an account that has the minimum privileges necessary to successfully execute the stored procedures.  But these aren’t trivial permissions:

• SELECT from mysql.user table
• CREATE USER to support use of ALTER USER … PASSWORD EXPIRE
• EXECUTE for called stored …

Twitter VP of Infrastructure Operations Engineering Mazen Rawashdeh shared news and numbers yesterday on his blog:

"Last night, the world tuned in to Twitter to share the election results as U.S. voters chose a president and settled many other campaigns. Throughout the day, people sent more than 31 million election-related Tweets (which contained certain key terms and relevant hashtags). And as results rolled in, we tracked the surge in election-related Tweets at 327,452 Tweets per minute (TPM). These numbers reflect the largest election-related Twitter conversation during our 6 years of existence, though they don’t capture the total volume of all Tweets yesterday."

"Last night, Twitter averaged about 9,965 TPS from 8:11pm to 9:11pm PT, with a one-second peak of 15,107 TPS at 8:20pm PT and a one-minute peak of 874,560 TPM. …

Have you ever wondered how MySQL DBAs at other companies manage their day to day operations? Then join us at the #dbhangops google hangout.  My co-worker is trying to get a mix of DBAs running mid to large scale deployments to provide an open forum for people to talk about their experience and learn from others.   We've had several successful hangouts so far, and we're interested in opening it up to a wider audience.

Our next meetup is TBD, but we're planning on the following agenda:

Query killing: protecting your DBs
Alerting and Monitoring: what do you monitor and why?
The MySQL Utilities Python Library: use cases, building tools and automation
My.cnf config tuning: what parameters are important for you and why?

For more info see Geoff Anderson's blog.

For news …

Woooo, just wrapped up another night of #DBHangOps, check out the video:

For those of you who aren’t familiar with this awesome series of videos, it’s a bi-weekly meeting of MySQL DBAs via a Google Hangout to simply talk about databases (specifically MySQL). The discussions range anywhere from silly stories to awesome learnings and even little gotchas to know about when working with MySQL operationally. If you’re interested in catching when the next #DBHangops will happen, check MySQL planet for a blog post about it, or check this twitter search.

We look forward to talking with you!

I’ve noted previously that the new transportable tablespaces for InnoDB in MySQL 5.6 are a big step forward, and newly-released 5.6.9-rc makes importing tablespaces a bit easier.  In previous versions, you had to have a .cfg file to import the InnoDB tablespace.  That file is produced during FLUSH TABLE <tbl> FOR EXPORT operations, and contains InnoDB metadata that’s not contained in the .ibd tablespace file itself.  I filed a feature request requesting the .cfg file be made optional, and Sunny implemented it:

mysql> create table tt (a INT PRIMARY KEY, b VARCHAR(10), KEY(b)) ENGINE = InnoDB;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.33 sec)

mysql> …

The MySQL Plugin API is a neat way to add functionality to the MySQL server. Any user of MySQL is using it: see the storage engine plugins listed by SHOW PLUGINS. There are many types of plugins. For example, the do-whatever-you-want daemon plugins. Among the hottest things that appeared lately are plugins that add new interfaces to MySQL, such as the Memcache plugin of MySQL 5.6.

In my previous post, I shared my finding that MySQL 5.6.7 does not make a cost-based choice between Materialization and IN-to-EXISTS strategies for subqueries.

It turns out I was wrong. As Guilhem Bichot has blogged here, he has implemented cost-based choice between Materialization and IN->EXISTS in MySQL 5.6.7. Igor Babaev also wrote about the topic, and covered the reasons I didn’t see the feature - it isn’t mentioned in the documentation, development process at Oracle is quite closed, and the feature didn’t work for a basic example that I have tried.

Let’s try to focus on the technical part of it. Looking at the source code, I see that …

Today there was the 'Scale with MySQL' event in the new Oracle building in Utrecht. There were sessions about the MySQL 5.6 RC and about MySQL Cluster. It was nice to meet so many other MySQL users. It was interesting too hear about what MySQL is used for and in which kind of environments.

Visit the MySQL Events page to see all other location for the 'Scale with MySQL' sessions.

And there are more options for meeting other MySQL users in the Netherlands: The first meetup for the MySQL User Group NL is on Friday November 16th.

The Internet Summit seems to be the largest Tech event of the year in Raleigh,NC area. I’ve attended this conference last year and I’m proud to be a speaker this time around. If you’re up for early morning talks I’m part of “Tech Track: Inside the Data Center” block of sessions, starting at 8am, where I will talk about challenges of using MySQL in the data center.

I’ll be on the show for the full day tomorrow so feel free to drop me email if you’re attending if you’d like to catch up for business or pleasure.

Industry Leading Database Analyst Matt Aslett, MySQL Pioneer Doron Levari and Industry Veteran Paul Campaniello Host Webinar on The New World Order of NoSQL, NewSQL & MySQL BOSTON – November 7, 2012 — Picking the wrong database can result in slow performance or downtime, frustrated customers and lost revenue.  But navigating the new world order of [...] Read More