Following the opening keynote “Dolphins, now and beyond”, Marc Delisle presented on “State of phpMyAdmin”.

phpMyAdmin is an DBA administration tool for MySQL available today in 57 different languages. This is found today in many distributions, LAMP stack products and also in cpanel. The product is found at http://phpmyadmin.net.

There are current two versions, the legacy 2.x version to support older php 3.x & 4.x, The current version 3.x is for PHP 5.2 or greater.

The current UI includes some new features including.

• calendar input for date fields
• meta data for mime types e.g images, which is great for showing the output as an image, otherwise blob data
• Relational designer with the able to show and create foreign keys …

I had the honor of opening the day at the MySQL developer room at FOSDEM 2010 where I had a chance to talk about the MySQL product and community, now and what’s happening moving forward.

For those that missed the talk, my slides are available online at Slideshare however slides never due justice to some of the jokes including:

• What do you consider? the Blue Pill, or the Red Pill
• Why think two dimensionally, how about the Green Pill
• Emerging Breeds with performance enhancing modifications

Dolphins Now And Beyond – FOSDEM 2010 View more presentations from …

The MySQL configuration file, e.g. /etc/my.cnf has a number of different section headings including [mysql], [mysqld], [mysqld_safe]. It is important that you ensure you put the right variables into the right section. For example, the following my.cnf configuration file will not operate as the user probably expects.

[mysqld]
...
log-bin=mysql-bin
server-id=1
query_cache_size = 100M
query_cache_type = 1

...

[mysqld_safe]
...
key_buffer_size=600M
skip-innodb
...

In this example, this configuration does not give you a MyISAM key buffer of 600M, it’s actually the default of 8M.

mysql> show global variables like 'key_buffer_size';
+-----------------+---------+
| Variable_name   | Value   |
+-----------------+---------+
| key_buffer_size | 8388600 |
+-----------------+---------+

Be sure to add the right options to the [mysqld] section.

What I didn’t know until yesterday was that some programs read from …

I hit this interesting problem last night on 5.0.51a.

mysql> use information_schema;
mysql> desc routines;
ERROR 1 (HY000): Can't create/write to file '/home/tmp/#sql_fea_1.MYD' (Errcode: 24)
mysql> show create table routines\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
       Table: ROUTINES
Create Table: CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE `ROUTINES` (
  `SPECIFIC_NAME` varchar(64) NOT NULL default '',
  `ROUTINE_CATALOG` varchar(512) default NULL,
  `ROUTINE_SCHEMA` varchar(64) NOT NULL default '',
  `ROUTINE_NAME` varchar(64) NOT NULL default '',
  `ROUTINE_TYPE` varchar(9) NOT NULL default '',
  `DTD_IDENTIFIER` varchar(64) default NULL,
  `ROUTINE_BODY` varchar(8) NOT NULL default '',
  `ROUTINE_DEFINITION` longtext,
  `EXTERNAL_NAME` varchar(64) default NULL,
  `EXTERNAL_LANGUAGE` varchar(64) default NULL,
  `PARAMETER_STYLE` varchar(8) NOT NULL default '',
  `IS_DETERMINISTIC` varchar(3) NOT NULL default '',
  `SQL_DATA_ACCESS` varchar(64) NOT …

My talk on 10x performance improvements – A case study has just been approved for the 2010 MySQL Conference. This will be my 5th straight year speaking at the MySQL conferences. For those in Europe wanting a sneak peek I am also speaking at FOSDEM 2010 in Brussels on Feb 7th where I’ll be giving an abridged version.

As an independent MySQL consultant, my work generally covers performance tuning and scalability and sometimes database architecture. Often however my work involves a review of a given problem and recommendations (immediate, short and long term). I’m rarely involved in the full implementation and generally do not see the full fruits of the proposed work.

Recently however I was able to work with a client, first in resolving …

For those in the US the annual MySQL UC is taking place again in April. For those in Europe we have dedicated room for MySQL and MySQL related products/variants/branches at FOSDEM 2010 being held in Brussels, Belgium on 6-7 Feb.

This conference will feature a full day of talks with a format of 20 minutes presentation and 5 minutes Q&A. More information about submissions can be found at Call for Papers for “MySQL and Friends” Developer Room at FOSDEM 2010 now open!

Other references:

• FOSDEM 2010 (via Forge Wiki)
• …

When looking at a set of SQL statements in isolation with tools such as the slow query log, processlist and tcpdump/mk-query-digest it is easy to identify queries that are slow.

It is more difficult however to identify the frequency of the query, and whether the slow query is actually acceptable in your overall system design.

I very simple technique to help you is to comment your queries. For example:

SELECT /* 10m cache */ ...;

When I’m working for a client, this process enables me to realize the purpose of the query more quickly and to help prioritize which queries I need to improve first. This does not mean I simply ignore these less frequent queries, however my choices for reviewing and indexing queries on given tables is adjusted generally for OLTP queries first, and batch second.

As with all practices it is important to implement across your full code base.

It finally dawned on me while reflecting on the year past this Sunday that the missing voice since the announcement of the Oracle acquisition of Sun Microsystems (and therefore MySQL) has been the MySQL employees.

When I worked as an employee for MySQL Inc, the acquisition by Sun Microsystems in 2008 lead to several requirements about the acquisition.

• You were not allowed to talk about the acquisition publically.
• You were not allowed to communicate with any Sun (i.e. the acquirer) resources.

In other words it was “business as usual” which is really an oxymoron, because business will never be exactly as it was before the announcement. The ongoing delay in pending acquisition by Oracle Corporation is really hurting everybody with getting on with doing their jobs, being happy with their work, and making a difference in open source and in the lives of all the benefit from using MySQL.

…

I have a problem with an easy way to install MySQL via rpm without resorting to specifying the exact point release of MySQL. Presently my local yum repository has versions of 5.0, 5.1,5.4 and 5.5.

If I want to install MySQL Sever, I can just run:

$ sudo yum install -y MySQL-server
Setting up Install Process
Package MySQL-server-community-5.5.0-1.rhel5.x86_64 already installed and latest version
Nothing to do

The issue here is the most current version is installed. If I want to install the most current version of 5.1 for example, I have found no way to specify MySQL-server-5.1, or MySQL-server-community-5.1, I have to specify the point release MySQL-server-community-5.1.40

I suspect there is some internal aliasing that may be possible within rpm’s to support this. I’m seeking help from any rpm experts and would appreciate any feedback.

My current products include:

$ sudo yum list …

Many providers embedd MySQL with their commercial products including Adobe, Macfee, Nokia, Symantec and ScienceLogic just to name a few. In addition most commercial third party storage engines have for years been forced to provided very customized versions of MySQL due to limitations in the storage engine API. These situations require a license agreement necessary with the trademark holder of MySQL. The Oracle Corporation EU Statement released on December 14, 2009 has carefully worded in the statement about these OEM licenses and storage engine providers there will be no changes for 5 years.

One specific detail is missing, what happens then?

As an individual that uses, recommends, promotes and advises clients especially on various storage engine …