Table optimization is a necessary evil; tables sometimes need to be optimized to reclaim space or to improve query performance.  Unfortunately, MySQL blocks writes to a table while it is being optimized.  Because optimization time is proportional to the table size, writes can be blocked for a long time.  Fractal Tree indexes support online optimization; however, the MySQL metadata lock gets in the way of writing while optimizing.  We will describe a simple patch to MySQL that enables online optimization of TokuDB tables.

Why do tables need to be optimized?  Here are some reasons.

• Insertions with random keys can result in a tree with underutilized leaf blocks.  Many tree algorithms split nodes in half when they become full.  If these nodes are stored in fixed sized blocks, like many B-trees do, then there can be a lot of wasted space.  Table optimization of B-trees write blocks with less …

Some people speak incredibly fast, others make you fall asleep listening. If you have a heterogenous MySQL cluster with differently sized machines, some will be able to answer questions faster than others. PECL/mysqlnd_ms 1.4, the PHP MySQL replication plugin, allows you to assign more requests to the faster ones than to the others. Cluster nodes can be given a weight, a priority for load balancing. For example, a node given a weight of two will get twice as many requests in the average as a node assigned the default weight of one.

Load Balancing adaptive to hardware size

The mysqlnd replication plugin features round robin and random load balancing. Random can be combined with a sticky option which means the
plugin picks a random node at the beginning of the web requests and uses it until the end for all requests that the node can fulfill. For example, …

From the desk of your new Bazaar plugin for Jenkins maintainer, I give you Version 1.18.

This release has two good bug fixes:

• UI fix for checkout option (JENKINS-12261)
• Auto-recover from corrupt BZR branches (e.g. bzr branch/checkout killed at inopportune moment) by cleaning the workspace and trying again (this is now default behaviour, best used with the Jenkins SCM retry count feature being > 1)

We’ve been running the same code as this release at Percona for about 2 months now (the second bugfix was one I wanted to test first before submitting upstream). This is the big fix that fixed all our problems with using bazaar with Jenkins in a large deployment.

The other news? I’m now maintainer, and this is my first release.

The page on the Jenkins wiki is here:

• …

For Drizzle and for all of the projects we work on at Percona we use the Bazaar revision control system (largely because it’s what we were using at MySQL and it’s what MySQL still uses). We also use Jenkins.

We have a lot of jobs in our Jenkins. A lot. We build upstream MySQL 5.1, 5.5 and 5.6, Percona Server 5.1, Percona Server 5.5, XtraBackup 1.6, 2.0 and 2.1. For each of these we also have the normal trunk builds as well as parameterised ones that allow a developer to test out a tree before they ask for it to be merged. We also have each of these products across seven operating systems and for each of those both x86 32bit and 64bit. If we weren’t already in the hundreds of jobs, we certainly are once you multiply out between release and debug and XtraBackup being across so many MySQL and Percona …

It’s with great pleasure that I announce that my friend and colleague, Francisco Bordenave, will be talking about MySQL Replication at 2:10pm on the 28th of June 2012. This is the 1st Latin American MySQL, NoSQL and Cloud Conference in Buenos Aires being held at the Hilton Hotel.
Replication is at the heart of many highly available MySQL installations. Francisco will be giving an introduction to replication, the fundamentals behind the feature and he will be disclosing some of his tips and tricks for monitoring and troubleshooting. He will also be talking about some of the awesome features that Oracle are releasing in the next major version, 5.6.

If you use replication for your product then this is one not to miss!

There are some other great talks going on this week at the conference. If I was at the conference I would be keen to see;

How …

Today I was looking at the ALTER TABLE performance with fast index creation and without it with different buffer pool sizes. Results are pretty interesting. I used modified Sysbench table for these tests because original table as initially created only has index on column K which initially contains only zeros, which means index is very small and also very fast to build by insertion as insertions happen in the “end” of index tree. I’ve updated column to have bunch of long random strings update sbtest set c=concat(sha1(rand()),’-',sha1(rand()),’-',sha1(rand()),’-',sha1(rand()),’-',sha1(rand())); and added key on column C: alter table sbtest add key c(c); The box I’m using for test is rather old box with 8GB of RAM and 4*SATA disks in RAID10. I used 10mil row table which would look as following in terms of data and index size:

mysql> show table status like "sbtest" \G …

Ronald Bradford,  an Oracle ACE Director has been busy working with  database consulting, book writing (EffectiveMySQL) while traveling and speaking around the world in support of MySQL. I was able to take some of his time to get an interview on this thoughts about theMySQL Connect conference.

Keith Larson: What where your thoughts when you heard that Oracle was going to provide the community the MySQL Conference ?

Ronald Bradford: Oracle …

Join Francisco Bordenave from Pythian's MySQL team for a presentation on replication, old and new.

Copying Brian's blog post so it's fed to Planet MySQL:

I gave my first presentation at MySQL/NoSQL/Cloud Latin American Conference today, in fact, it was my first presentation ever. I've spoken in front of small groups for a few minutes before, but never a presentation complete with slides. The talk was so successful that even the Percona guys wanted to know how Mozilla manages MySQL with Puppet!

Thanks to Santiago Lertora of Binlogic for putting together the conference. If you're interested in the slides they can be downloaded …

Looking for a great opportunity to share your MySQL knowledge with the MySQL community? Here is your chance.

Percona is happy to announce that the dates of the Percona Live MySQL London Conference have been set for Dec. 3-4, 2012. Call for speakers is underway and will be open until August 17th, 2012. The conference committee will review proposals that fit into the likely conference tracks of:

• Developing Applications
• Database Administration
• Trends in Architecture and Design
• Tools
• Utilizing Hardware
• New Features
• Best Practices for Businesses
• Replication
• High Availability Strategies

Each session is 50 minutes in length, including a Q&A period.

The conference will also include tutorial sessions. Tutorials should present immediate and practical applications of in-depth MySQL knowledge targeted at a …