MySQL 5.5 has created a lot of hype and its not just hype, there are major performance enhancements not only in the MySQL server itself but in the newer InnoDB plugin shipped with MySQL 5.5. That's exactly the reason why I have myself upgraded to MySQL 5.5 (The server running this blog run MySQL 5.5). Now since I haven't come across a guide to help in upgrading to MySQL 5.5, I thought why not make one myself

This month’s Maatkit release has some nice new features and improvements to mk-query-digest. There is one that deserves its own blog post: EXPLAIN sparklines.

A “sparkline” is a simple type of chart that conveys important information without the details. We added a kind of ASCII sparkline to mk-query-digest to convey important information about the query’s EXPLAIN plan so you can see if the query is “bad” or not. It is kind of a cryptic geek code that you will need some help decoding. It’s intentionally compact, so that it can fit in the “profile” that mk-query-digest prints out from a normal report.

Here is an example of the profile report:

# Profile
# Rank Query ID           Response time    Calls R/Call   Apdx V/M   EXPLAIN Item
# ==== ================== ================ ===== ======== ==== ===== ======= =====
#    1 0x808CDA06B6EB3D5A     0.0141 …

There is quite a buzz about HandlerSocket built into the latest Percona Server. I agree with Henrik that this is a brilliant idea that is going to go very far!

But I did the same thing 2.5 years ago with the BLOB Streaming Engine. In this blog I explain how you can retrieve data out of the database using the BLOB Streaming Engine and a simple URL of the form: http://mysql-host-name:8080/database/table/blob-column/condition

Where condition has the form: column1=value1&column2=value2&...

Now I have to ask myself the question: why did we not …

Be careful with my findings, I appear to have compile in debug mode, I am redoing the benchmarks. Updated version here.

I recently had to work with many customers having large number of connections opened in MySQL and although I told them this was not optimal, I had no solid arguments to present. More than once, I heard: it is not a problem, those connections are Sleeping! In order to remedy to this situation, I decided to run a series of DBT2 benchmarks while the number of idle connections was varied from 0 to 1500. I was expecting an influence, because those idle threads are presents in internal MySQL list objects that need to be scanned and also the socket SELECT call needs to build a FD bitmap after every network activity and the size of the bitmap is proportional to the number of active …

Some times it's very difficult to find out exact issue. Specially When it's related with hardware. Similar scenario, i faced with a client.

I have been provided with a new box to setup mysql server. After setup mysql along with other application, mysql frequently goes down without any comment in mysql error log file. Spending few days verifying os, logs, mysql and later i found the culprit using memtester tool.

Thanks to memtester tool.

[root@voice ~]# memtester 5 1
memtester version 4.1.2 (32-bit)
Copyright (C) 2009 Charles Cazabon.
Licensed under the GNU General Public License version 2 (only).

pagesize is 4096
pagesizemask is 0xfffff000
want 5MB (5242880 bytes)
got  5MB (5242880 bytes), trying mlock ...locked.
Loop 1/1:
Stuck Address       : ok      
Random Value        : ok
Compare XOR         : ok
Compare SUB         : ok
FAILURE: 0x7888cfc4 != 0xe088cfc4 at offset 0x00039fba.
Compare MUL         : FAILURE: 0x00000001 != …

MySQL v5.5 is GA, but is it working with Python? Yes, it does. Below you’ll find some quick, small tests I did with MySQLdb, oursql and our own MySQL Connector/Python.

My desktop is a Mac, but when it works on that, I’m sure it works elsewhere too. If not, just let us know!

MySQL for Python (aka MySQLdb)

Installing MySQL v5.5.8 64-bit from tar ball on MacOS X 10.6, it compiled fine and the module loaded giving me the …

CPTN Holdings unmasked. Oracle updates MySQL. And more.

Follow 451 CAOS Links live @caostheory on Twitter and Identi.ca, and daily at Paper.li/caostheory
“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

# Florian Mueller reported that the Novell patent acquiring CPTN Holdings is Microsoft, Apple, EMC and Oracle.

# The VAR Guy told the (previously) untold story of Novell’s sale to Attachmate.

# Attachmate committed to support the existing roadmaps and release schedules for Novell and SUSE products.

# Oracle …

Series

What are the chances for a free software cloud?

• Resolving the contradictions between web services, clouds, and open source
• Defining clouds, web services, and other remote computing
• Why clouds and web services will continue to take over computing
• Why web services should be released as free …

MySQL v5.5 is GA and my blog, using WordPress 3.0, runs on it.

My personal highlight of this new MySQL version? The fact that it is released by Oracle.

Last week, the Linux-HA project made its Heartbeat 3.0.4 and Cluster Glue 1.0.7 release, and Pacemaker released 1.0.10 a few weeks back. Thanks to the amazing Simon Horman (horms to IRC regulars), those releases have been uploaded to Debian unstable (sid) yesterday.

What’s sid?

sid is the permanent code name of the Debian unstable distribution. It’s where package maintainers upload fresh builds and maintain the latest versions of distribution packages. It’s not meant for general consumption, …