Instead of the usual text-heavy blog posts that appear here, I thought it would be fun to mix things up and do a screencast showing exactly how easy it is to upgrade MySQL to MariaDB:

Some notes:

• The laptop I’m using had MySQL 5.1.55 installed with one database (apart from the system database). Installing MariaDB does not impact existing data in any way and once the install completed I had instant access to my data.
• As part of the install you are given the option to set a new password for the root user. I choose to do it in the video, but you don’t need to. If you leave the password field blank the root password will not be changed. Other database users are preserved, of course.
• As with any database upgrade, before doing this to a production system you should have backups and test.

Links:

Links shown or mentioned in the video:

• …

I will be in Austin for SITE presenting Teaching Database Concepts with Open Source Software on Wednesday, March 6th. So if you are a teacher attending SITE, please come attend my session. And bring your boots so we can hit 6th Street afterwards!

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An attendee to Espen’s recent webinar asked how to check tables for corruption. This kind of ties into my recent post on InnoDB’s handling of corrupted pages, because the best way to check for corruption is with CHECK TABLES, but if a page is corrupt, InnoDB will crash the server to prevent access to the corrupt data. As mentioned in that post, this can only be changed by changing InnoDB.

So how are you supposed to check for corruption that might be introduced by bad hardware, a bug, or so forth?

It’s a great question. The answer I would give for most cases is “check your backups for corruption instead of your live server.” You need to do this anyway — a backup that …

Continuent is increasing its presence in Europe to offer our solutions and services for the open source database business sector in the region. VNC is Continuent's new partner in Germany, Austria and Switzerland (DACH). Read the entire press release here.Continuent and VNC are hosting a live webcast demonstrating advanced MySQL and PostgreSQL replication and clustering with Continuent Tungsten

In various discussions I have expressed that I think that there are way too many options and variables in MySQL (and it gets worse for every new release). There are simply too many to know and remember them all.  If you manage a server yourself  it is (probably) a minor problem as you should know the options you use and not use those that you don’t know.  But if you are connected to a server that you don’t manage yourself you may get surprises if some rare option you are not familiar with has been set.

The last one I came across is ‘skip-character-set-client-handshake’.  MySQL documentation http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/server-options.html says “To ignore client information and use the default server character set, use –skip-character-set-client-handshake; this makes MySQL behave like MySQL 4.0.”

Now what is the idea in having a recent server ‘behave like MySQL …

Shlomi Noach has made a couple of posts (here and here) on Visual Editors vs. commandline for MySQL working with SQL statements. All in all, I tend to agree with him in many respects, but I am surprised that he recommands MySQL Query Browser, as this is the editor that breaks one of the things that seems to annoy him (and me) most: Every SQL statement that is issed uses it's own connection. Which is not to say others may feel differently about it.

As for myself, I started developing my own MyQuery tool because there are things you just cannot do from the commandline, and there are things that are really complex and non-inituitive to do from the …

The first Central Virginia MySQL Meetup was a nice little howdy-do, and as a test flight, I think it showed that the bird can get off the ground quite nicely. So, with the generous help of our meeting host Meddius, we’re going to do it regularly on the 3rd Wednesday of every month. The next event is already scheduled — I will be talking about high availability options for MySQL.

I’m interested in having outside speakers. Anyone who’d like to come and present something MySQL-relevant, please feel free to email me, or contact me via the Meetup page with the “suggest a Meetup” feature. If you’re traveling from outside the area, the airport is CHO, and it’s about 30 minutes away. Amtrak is also …

We are pleased to announce that MySQL Enterprise Monitor 2.3.9 is now available for download on the My Oracle Support (MOS) web site as our latest GA release. It will also be available via the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud in approximately 1-2 weeks. This is a maintenance release that fixes a number of bugs. You can find more information on the contents of this release in the changelog:

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql-monitor/2.3/en/mem-news-2-3-9.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 (Advanced Search)" feature.

And from the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud (in about 1-2 weeks):
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We are pleased to announce that MySQL Enterprise Monitor 2.3.9 is now available for download on the My Oracle Support (MOS) web site as our latest GA release. It will also be available via the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud in approximately 1-2 weeks. This is a maintenance release that fixes a number of bugs. You can find more information on the contents of this release in the changelog:

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql-monitor/2.3/en/mem-news-2-3-9.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 (Advanced Search)" feature.

And from the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud (in about 1-2 weeks):
…

MySQL Enterprise Monitor Advisors version 2.3.9.2137 is now available.