MySQL 5.6 is probably the version of MySQL with the biggest bundle of new features. You may want to try it soon, since it's now released as GA, and I would like to offer some practical experience on how to use some of the advanced features.

Since replication is my main interest, I will focus on some of the new features in this field, and I will compare what's available in MySQL 5.6 with Tungsten Replicator.

The focus of the comparison is usability, manageability, and some hidden functionality. Parallel replication has been available with Tungsten Replicator for almost two years, and Global Transaction Identifiers for much longer than that. With MySQL 5.6, it seems that the MySQL team wants to close the gap. While the main feature (parallel execution threads) is available and performing well, there are some shocking differences in terms of ease of use, administration …

Based on a lot of surprising comments about my MySQL 5.5 vs 5.6 performance post I decided to perform deeper investigation to see where my results could go possibly wrong. I had set up everything to be as simple as possible to get maximally repeatable results. I did Read Only ran which is typically a lot more repeatable (though also less relevant for production like workload). I had done number of iterations for benchmark run and I used dedicated physical hardware box so external environment impact often causing problems in Virtualized environments can be eliminated. Still I found there could be large variance between the runs.

I set up the benchmarks run to go over night in the loop, doing the benchmark run for 5 runs when restarting MySQL server and repeating the run. I did it on 2 identical boxes to eliminate faulty hardware as …

We are pleased to announce that MySQL Enterprise Monitor 2.3.13 is now available for download on the My Oracle Support (MOS) web site. It will also be available via the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud with the March update in about 3 weeks. This is a maintenance release that contains several new features and fixes a number of bugs. There are 13 new rules and 6 new graphs focused mainly on new features in MySQL Server 5.6. You can find more information on the contents of this release in the change log:

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql-monitor/2.3/en/mem-news-2-3-13.html

You will find binaries for the new release on My Oracle Support:

https://support.oracle.com

Choose the "Patches & Updates" tab, and then use the "Product or Family …

I’ve said it before, and, as is the nature of these things, I’ll almost certainly say it again: your database performance is only as good as your indexes.

That’s the grand thesis, so what does that mean? In any DB system — SQL, NoSQL, NewSQL, PostSQL, … — data gets ingested and organized. And the system answers queries. The pain point for most users is around the speed to answer queries. And the query speed (both latency and throughput, to be exact) depend on how the data is organized. In short: Good Indexes, Fast Queries; Poor Indexes, Slow Queries.

But building indexes is hard work, or at least it has been for the last several decades, because almost all indexing is done with B-trees. That’s true of commercial databases, of MySQL, and of most NoSQL solutions that do indexing. (The ones that don’t do …

I discussed that over at the ideeli Tech Blog: http://insatiabledemand.ideeli.com/post/18850015294/diagnosing-mysql-auto-inc-and-gap-locks

MySQL is the world’s most popular open-source database, and powers websites and applications of numerous leading and fast-growing organizations.


On March 12, we’re hosting the first Virtual Developer Day: MySQL at 9am PST to give you a one-stop shop to learn all the essential MySQL skills and the latest features in MySQL 5.6 GA. With a combination of presentations and hands-on lab experience, you’ll have the opportunity to practice in your own environment and gain more in-depth knowledge to successfully design, develop, and manage your MySQL databases.


Featuring speakers coming from Oracle’s MySQL …

Tungsten Replicator 2.0.7 enables new MySQL versions, provides better support for multi-master and parallel replication, and improves setup of advanced topologies. In the MySQL area, we have added the ability to replicate from MySQL into Amazon RDS instances, as well as initial certification for MySQL 5.6. 

There are several important new features for multi-master replication, including better

Inspired by long debates about differences in my benchmark results on MySQL 5.6, MySQL 5.5 and MariaDB 5.5 and MariaDB benchmark results, I've decided to start a series of articles helping people to reproduce various test cases and better understand some of fun stuff around.. ;-)

This article is fully dedicated to the MySQL 5.6/5.5 vs MariaDB tests.

So far, generally, when you're trying to understand a source of gap in performance results, you should try to start from the most simple case for both "solutions", "platforms", and so on.. For databases the most "simple" case is Read-Only (RO) workload, specially the OLTP RO workload which is fully cached by RDBMS buffers and no more depending on your storage …

SCaLE 11xand the MySQL community are excited to bring you a full day track covering MySQL content. This event will be held February 22, 2013 at the LAX Hilton.

Tungsten Replicator 2.0.7 was released today. In addition to a large number of bug fixes, this release adds several improvements for multi-master management, and support for Amazon RDS (as a slave).

While the Release Notes show a long list of improvements, I would like to focus on some of them that improve the handling of multi-master deployments.

When we released version 2.0.6, we added the first revision of the cookbook recipes in the build. That was still a green addition, which caused several bug reports. But since then, we have integrated the cookbook in our internal testing, making these recipes more robust and reliable. We are also planning to improve them and eventually …