There have been a number of comments that Amazon RDS does not allow users access to MySQL replication capabilities (for example here and here).  This is a pity. Replication is one of the great strengths of MySQL and the lack of it is a show-stopper for many users.  As of the latest build of Tungsten Replicator half of this problem is on the way to being solved. You can now set up real-time replication from an external MySQL master into an Amazon RDS instance.

In the remainder of this article I will explain how to set up Tungsten replication to an Amazon RDS slave, then add a few thoughts …

How To Back Up MySQL Databases With mylvmbackup On Ubuntu 12.10

mylvmbackup is a Perl script for quickly creating MySQL backups. It uses LVM's snapshot feature to do so. To perform a backup, mylvmbackup obtains a read lock on all tables and flushes all server caches to disk, creates a snapshot of the volume containing the MySQL data directory, and unlocks the tables again. This article shows how to use it on an Ubuntu 12.10 server.

In preparing Percona Server 5.5.29 (not yet released, but soon), I filed MySQL bug 68045 (is marked private as it’s a security bug). This bug is in relation to the Oracle fix for CVE-2012-4414 and a problem I found with it. The MariaDB fix (which we incorporated into Percona Server 5.5.28-29.3) is not affected.

When the MariaDB team fixed CVE-2012-4414 they created a test case named rpl_mdev382.test which can be …

MySQL 5.6 is in RC state now which means it is going to be GA sooner or later.

This release contains a lot of improvements. However, since I am a support engineer, I most amazed by those which make troubleshooting easier.

So here is the list of my favorite troubleshooting improvements.

1. EXPLAIN for UPDATE/INSERT/DELETE.

This is extremely useful feature.

Although prior version 5.6 we, theoretically, could have some kind of explain for them too, for example, if convert DML queries to their SELECT equivalents, optimizer can optimize them differently.

We still could execute DELETE or UPDATE, then query Hadler_% status variables, but who wants to execute update just for testing on live database? And anyway, querying Handler_% variables we could only know if some index was used or not, but can not identify which one.

2. INFORMATION …

TokuDB® is a proven solution that scales MySQL® and MariaDB® from GBs to TBs with unmatched insert and query speed, compression, replication performance and online schema flexibility. Tokutek’s recently launched TokuDB v6.6 delivers all of these features and more, with additional improvements in multi-client, fast SQL updates, and in-memory performance.

Date: January 15th
Time: 2 PM EST / 11 AM PST
REGISTER TODAY

Topics will include:

• Performance – With a 10x or more improvement in insertions and indexing, TokuDB delivers faster, more complex ad hoc queries in live production systems without rewriting or tuning applications. Offering high performance even when tables are too large for memory, TokuDB scales MySQL and MariaDB far beyond either InnoDB or MyISAM. …

MySQL Cluster Manager 1.2.2 is now available to download from E-delivery and from My Oracle Support .

Details on the changes can be found in the MySQL Cluster Manager documentation . Please give it a try and let me know what you think.

Documentation is available here.

The SkySQL and MariaDB Roadshow comes to Sweden:

Stockholm 7 February 2013, 16:30-19:30, Dramaten Restaurang Pauli

SkySQL and Monty Program are on the road with our joint - free - roadshow in Stockholm where Monty Widenius will unveil his vision of the future of the MySQL database via MariaDB.

In addition, we will have speakers from Codership/Galera, as well as SkySQL experts.

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Open source software has made inroads to most of the industry verticals, and enterprises are aggressively adopting it because of its flexibility, scalability, and significant cost saving capability. But these alone cannot be the deciding factors while deploying business-critical open source projects; instead measuring the expertise and track record of the vendor with a degree of assurance. To help you understand the dynamics and motivators in choosing an Open Source vendor, we have enlisted a few pointers.

A Technology Savior
Technology is the catalyst through that you are going to solve your business problem. So, it is crucial to get an inside view of an open source vendor’s technology capabilities. To know how efficient the vendor is in unlocking the potential of open source platform, following points can help you:

• Open source language expertise
• Framework-Expertise, for example in PHP …

Let's say you have a database that stores not only current transactional data, but also historic data that's unchanging. In particular, you have a large table containing hundreds of gigabytes worth of last year's data, and it won't change. Having backed it up already, you don't need to back it up every time. Is there any way to exclude this table from a backup?

For InnoDB tables with innodb-file-per-table enabled (the default as of MySQL 5.6), MySQL Enterprise Backup supports this feature in inverse. Specifically, you can choose to include specific innodb-file-per-table tables in addition to those stored in the system tablespace.

In order to exclude a specific table, you need to provide a regular expression to the --include option that includes every table except the one you want to exclude. For example, in my sakila …

I'm often asked why Tarantool is written in Objective C. Damien Katz, my ex-colleague from MySQL AB :), wrote a very good post on the strengths of C. We use Objective C as "C with exceptions". Objective C' @finally clause allows for simple integration of exception-aware code with C code. In contrast, the only sensible way to deal with exceptions in C++ is RAII, and this pretty much means that you forget about C the moment you decide to use exceptions in your program.

One serious "deficiency" of C is that it doesn't bring along the programming paradigms and patterns found in modern programming languages. In other words, it doesn't teach you programming culture. This is why, I …