TokuDB v6.5 adds the ability to expand certain column types without downtime.  Users can now enlarge char, varchar, varbinary, and integer columns with no interruption to insert/update/delete statements on the altered table.  Prior to this feature, enlarging one of these column types required a full table rebuild.  InnoDB blocks all insert/update/delete operations to a table during column expansion as it rebuilds the table and all indexes.

We recently added SSDs to our existing servers (HP DL380 servers with internal RAID arrays).  I opted for LSI controllers (LSI 9285-8e and LSI 9280-4i4e), Samsung 830 SSDs, and a Sans Digital AccuRaid AS108X enclosure.  I was unable to locate much in the way of optimizing Linux for SSD/RAID performance and plan on blogging my findings in the future.  However, the out of the box performance is seriously fast.

I was curious to see how much downtime occurs when issuing …

In time for the first ever MySQL Connect conference Oracle is releasing a series of exciting new developments for MySQL Cluster, further extending its simplicity and flexibility by expanding the range of use-cases, adding new NoSQL options, and automating configuration.

We’re pleased to announce the first preview version of the Cassandra Storage Engine!

The Cassandra Storage Engine (SE) allows access to Cassandra databases from MariaDB/MySQL, and to provide data integration between the SQL and NoSQL worlds.

Have you ever needed to

• grab some of Cassandra’s data from your web frontend, or SQL query?
• insert a few records into Cassandra from some part of your app?

With Cassandra SE, this is easily possible. Cassandra SE makes Cassandra’s column families appear as MariaDB/MySQL tables that you can insert to, update, and select from. You can perform joins on Cassandra data, or againist data in Cassandra and data in MariaDB.

Today we’re releasing a source tarball, as well as a binary tarball package …

Finally, I finished writing the MySQL Workbench book. It’ll be available next spring. Now it’s time to leave for the plane, fly to San Francisco, and see everyone at MySQL Connect.

I look forward to meeting folks, I’ll be presenting after MySQL Connect for those staying for Oracle Open World. My presentation is at Oracle Develop on Monday, 10/1/12 from 16:45 – 17:45, in the Marriott Marquis – Foothill F. As I mentioned in an earlier post, you can probably catch me in Moscone West at the bookstore. The publisher requests we attend book signings.

Unfortunately as a speaker I need to convert my Keynote to Powerpoint, and had to purchase, install, and update Microsoft Office 2011 on my Mac. Open Office and Keynote weren’t on the approved list, alas …

MySQL Connector/Net 6.6.3, a new version of the all-managed .NET driver for MySQL has been released.  This is the second of two beta releases intended to introduce users to the new features in the release.

I just came across this: "Scaling Pinterest and adventures in database sharding"  (http://gigaom.com/data/scaling-pinterest-and-adventures-in-database-sharding/)
"Pinterest has learned about scaling the way most popular sites do — the architecture works until one day it doesn’t"Pinterest found out that "the architecture" is not scalable and they turned to development of a Scale Out mechanism also called Sharding.

I find it amazing that sharding, or in other words, the idea of "scale out by splitting and parallelizing data across shared-nothing commodity-hardware" is not supplied "out of the box" by "the architecture" (such as database, load-balancer, any other IT stuff). I'm wondering who was the one that decided that an IT issue like scale-out should be outsourced from the database to the …

This week we talk about startup scripts and their gotchas. Ear candy is a startup cache gotcha and at the movies presents an introduction to VoltDB.

Events

Percona Live Santa Clara, 2013 call for papers closes Friday October 12th.

Oracle's "Scale with MySQL" seminars:
near Paris, Tuesday 16 October
Scale with MySQL Seminar, London, Tuesday 30 October

read more …

Parallel Universe is now available as part of Linux OS images at www.GoGrid.com .
GoGrid.com is a dedicated/cloud server hosting site.

My colleague at Booking.com, Dennis Kaarsemaker, just blogged an interesting article about the Replication Load Monitor we are using at work. This is based on work from Mark Leith, but presents a much more detailed view.

May it be useful.

Infor announced this week, that they will provide open source database alternatives to some of their products. MariaDB has been chosen, tested, and certified by Infor to be the open source database of choice (together with MySQL) for the Infor LN and ION products. Infor LN is Infor’s flagship ERP and is sometimes better known by its former name, Baan. It has 25 years of manufacturing know-how built into it and is used by more than 5,000 companies worldwide in a wide range of industries. These include automotive, industrial equipment and machinery, high tech and electronics, and aerospace and defense. This is a big stamp of approval that even the most critical systems can be run on MariaDB.

In other news, there are currently several really interesting paths coming together into some important milestones. The rest of this post …