Have you ever noticed the vast number of command line programs that ship with MySQL? Here is an ls from MySQL 5.6.16's bin directory:

morgo@Rbook:~/Documents/mysql-installs/5.6.16/bin$ ls
innochecksum
msql2mysql
my_print_defaults
myisam_ftdump
myisamchk
myisamlog
myisampack
mysql
mysql_client_test
mysql_client_test_embedded
mysql_config
mysql_config_editor
mysql_convert_table_format
mysql_embedded
mysql_find_rows
mysql_fix_extensions
mysql_plugin
mysql_secure_installation
mysql_setpermission
mysql_tzinfo_to_sql
mysql_upgrade
mysql_waitpid
mysql_zap
mysqlaccess
mysqlaccess.conf
mysqladmin
mysqlbinlog
mysqlbug
mysqlcheck
mysqld
mysqld-debug
mysqld_multi
mysqld_safe
mysqldump
mysqldumpslow
mysqlhotcopy
mysqlimport
mysqlshow
mysqlslap
mysqltest
mysqltest_embedded
perror
replace
resolve_stack_dump
resolveip

For MySQL 5.7 we are planning to cleanup and remove programs that appear to have no current use-case. This helps us to improve …

In November, I wrote about the command SHOW ENGINE INNODB MUTEX and sought feedback as to how it continues to be used post introduction of performance_schema.

The outcome from this feedback is that the MySQL team has decided to remove this command from MySQL 5.7.

These decisions are not light ones for the team to make. I wanted to thank everyone for their feedback, and also share why this decision was an important one for the future of MySQL:

1. By design, data collection for SHOW ENGINE INNODB MUTEX was always enabled, with no switch to disable it. We believe that for some workloads being able to disable the collection is useful, and in the case of performance_schema this is possible.
2. performance_schema overlaps with this …

As a follow up to the previous blog announcement we are pleased to announce following conferences in EMEA & APAC which MySQL Community Team supports. As usual not only MySQL staff is attending, we are sharing our resources with Oracle VM, Linux and Java (where applicable). Please come to meet us at: 

EMEA 

• OpenSUSE Conference - Dubrovnik, Croatia, April 24-28, 2014
  • You can meet the MySQL team at our booth or at any of approved talks. Schedule for this event is not yet approved/published. Please watch the OpenSUSE website for current program schedule. 
• JavaScript UnConference, Hamburg, Germany, Apr 26, 2014 …

On the road again - FOSSAsia

It has been a few busy months until now. I have moved from Italy to Thailand, and the move has been my first priority, keeping me from attending FOSDEM and interacting with social media. Now I start catching my breath, and looking around for new events to attend. But before I get into this, let’s make a few things clear:

• I am still working for Continuent. Actually, it’s because of my company flexibility that I could move to a different country (a different continent, 6 time zones away) without much trouble. Thanks, Continuent! (BTW: Continuent is hiring! )
• I am still involved with MySQL activities, events, and community matters. I just happen to be in a different time zone, where direct talk with people in Europe and …

The MySQL February Newsletter is available! Find out the latest news on MySQL products and MySQL Connect 2014, and read the technical tips written by MySQL experts at Oracle and in the community. Below are the highlights in this edition:

• Start Preparing for MySQL Connect 2014 Call for Papers
• New GA Release: MySQL for Visual Studio
• Blog: State of the UNION
• Blog: New MySQL Web Installer -- Have You Tried It Yet?
• Blog: MySQL Workbench: Frequent Crashes on Mac OS X? This Might Be The Fix
• Event: MySQL Seminars Are Coming to a City Near You

You can read it online or subscribe to it to receive the latest updates right in your inbox. Watch this …

Thank you to the MySQL Community, on behalf of the MySQL team @ Oracle. Your bug reports, testcases and patches have helped create a better MySQL 5.6.16.

In particular:

• Thanks to Honza Horak for suggesting we make tmpdir configurable at build-time, and for providing a patch. Bug #68338.
• Thanks to Hartmut Holzgraefe for reporting a memory leak when using the InnoDB memcached API and replication. Bug #70757.
• Thanks to Justin Swanhart for reporting that InnoDB reported an incorrect operating system error code when it failed to initialize. Bug #70867.
• Thanks to Yoshinori Matsunobu who reported …

At FOSDEM 2014 ProxySQL and MaxScale were both presented. Both are proxy that can help build sophisticated MariaDB/MySQL architectures. But currently what is the most used proxy with MySQL? It is HAproxy. HAproxy is a level 4 proxy that has no knowledge of the MySQL protocol. Being low level makes it very fast but it [...]

Last Wednesday, I spoke at the San Francisco MySQL Meetup on the topic of changes coming in MySQL 5.7 (and later).  We actually went through two different slide decks; the first on features being considered for deprecation in MySQL 5.7 (or later), and the second set providing a brief overview of the new features and benefits already introduced in MySQL 5.7 via the development milestone releases (DMRs) published to date.  A big thanks to the entire SF Meetup group, and in particular the organizers (Erin, Mike and Darren), for having me.  The event was streamed and recorded, and you can view the full presentation on YouTube.  The slide deck can be found here.

The discussion around proposed deprecation was good, and this blog serves to document my own notes about what …

We are considering enabling the SQL mode ONLY_FULL_GROUP_BY by default in MySQL 5.7. Here is a quick example to demonstrate how this change will impact you:

Sample Data:

CREATE TABLE invoice_line_items (id INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY auto_increment, 
invoice_id INT NOT NULL,
description varchar(100)
);

INSERT INTO invoice_line_items VALUES 
 (NULL, 1, 'New socks'),
 (NULL, 1, 'A hat'),
 (NULL, 2, 'Shoes'),
 (NULL, 2, 'T shirt'),
 (NULL, 3, 'Tie');

Default behaviour in MySQL 5.6 and below:

mysql> SELECT id, invoice_id, description 
FROM invoice_line_items GROUP BY invoice_id;
+----+------------+-------------+
| id | invoice_id | description |
+----+------------+-------------+
|  1 |          1 | New socks   |
|  3 |          2 | Shoes       |
|  5 |          3 | Tie         |
+----+------------+-------------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Proposed default behaviour in MySQL 5.7:

mysql> SELECT id, …

The MySQL team has been busy fixing bugs and sorting through older bugs. To give you a couple of recent stats:

• Norvald blogged about 14 bugs fixed at the request of Linux Distributions.
• Tomas Ulin’s keynote at Percona Live mentioned 1991 Bugs Fixed in 5.6, with 3763 Bugs Fixed in Total Since MySQL 5.5 GA

As part of our spring cleaning efforts, we have also decided to retire the bug status to be fixed later. That is to say that:

• Some bugs that were marked as to be fixed later have actually been fixed. Keeping a status of items that won’t be fixed for now has proven difficult to diligently maintain as accurate.
• We want to prevent a half-way state …