Quick solution to an issue that the affected Debian Lenny release: the process used to collect the MEMORY_ACTIVE_BYTES variable has been modified to correct a situation where some systems report an array of memory information instead of the expected single integer value. The bug has been fixed in revision 21 and the current download (revision 22) is available for download or svn update. As usual, you can download the MySQL dbbenchmark script here: [downloads].

Thanks goes to Brian Vowell at Evernote.com for bringing this bug to my attention. The original bug report can be found here: [link]

There are many times when writing an application that single threaded database operations are simply too slow. In these cases it’s a matter of course that you’ll use multi-threading or forking to spawn secondary processes to handle the database actions. In this simple example for Python multi-threading you’ll see the how simple it is to improve the performance of your python app.

#!/usr/bin/python
## DATE: 2010-08-30
## AUTHOR: Matt Reid
## WEBSITE: http://themattreid.com
## LICENSE: BSD http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php
## Copyright 2010-present Matt Reid

from __future__ import division
from socket import gethostname;
import threading
import sys
import os
import MySQLdb

class threader(threading.Thread):
    def __init__(self,method):
        threading.Thread.__init__(self)
        self.tx =
        self.method = method
    def run(self):
        run_insert()

def run_insert():
    sql = "INSERT INTO table (`id`,`A`,`B`,`C`) VALUES …

We had a very successful weekend of Planet.mysql users submitting their database statistics so I’ve pushed some code into a new release today so that everyone can benefit from some new features. The biggest change is to the threading logic. Previously the benchmarking script was serializing MySQL operations and only making use of a secondary thread (not the invoking thread) to query the database. Now you have the option of running with “–threads=x” to make use of your multi-core server. A good example of this improvement was on my Macbook Pro; before the threading change it was inserting ~700/sec, after the code change I tried –threads=4 and saw an improvement to ~900/sec. Rather significant.

Download the new script now and see how your server compares to the ones in the …

We’re happy to announce the latest maintenance release of MySQL Connector/Net 6.2.4.

Version 6.2.4 maintenance release includes:

• Enhancement that allows a procedure to be recreated with a different number of parameters
• Fixes for 29 bugs

For details see http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/connector-net-news-6-2-4.html

MySQL Connector 6.2.4 :

1. Provides secure, high-performance data connectivity with MySQL.
2. Implements ADO.NET interfaces that integrate into ADO.NET aware tools.
3. Is a fully managed ADO.NET driver written in 100% pure C#.
4. Provide Visual Studio Integration

If you are a current user, we look forward to your feedback on all the new capabilities we are delivering.

As always, you will find binaries and source on our download pages.

Please get your copy from  …

The “DATA”

“The wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.” – Grace Hopper

A Shape file is the most common format for GIS vector data and just about every GIS program can use them.  Unfortunately not all GIS data come in a shape file format. An E00 (E-zero-zero) file is the file format used by Environment Systems Research Institute’s (ESRI). ESRI is the Photoshop of the GIS workplace. E00 files are used by ArcInfo and ArcGIS Explorer.  These are the two most common file formats. …

MySQL Connector/Net 6.1.5, a new version of the all-managed .NET driver for MySQL has been released. This is a maintenance release of the 6.1 branch and is suitable for use with MySQL server versions 5.0 and higher. It is now available in source and binary form from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/net/6.1.html] and mirror sites (note that not all mirror sites may be up to date at this point of time – if you can’t find this version on some mirror, please try again later or choose another download site.)

This is maintenance release.  Please review the change log (included with product or at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/connector-net-news-6-1-5.html) for details.

Thank you for working with MySQL!

…

MySQL Connector/Net 6.0.7, a new version of the all-managed .NET driver for MySQL has been released. This is a maintenance release of the 6.0 branch and is suitable for use with MySQL server versions 5.0 and higher. It is now available in source and binary form from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/net/6.0.html] and mirror sites (note that not all mirror sites may be up to date at this point of time – if you can’t find this version on some mirror, please try again later or choose another download site.)

This is maintenance release.  Please review the change log (included with product or at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/connector-net-news-6-0-7.html) for details.

Thank you for working with MySQL!

…

I'm pleased to announce the release of Spider storage engine version 2.22(beta), Vertical Partitioning storage engine version 0.11(beta) and BKA-for-ha_partition version 0.3.
Spider is a Storage Engine for database sharding.
http://spiderformysql.com/
Vertical Partitioning is a Storage Engine for vertical partitioning for a table.
http://launchpad.net/vpformysql
BKA-for-ha_partition is a patch file of supporting "Batched Key Access" for table partitioning feature.
http://launchpad.net/partitionmrrformysql

The main changes in this version are following.
Spider
- MS Windows support.
- Add UDF "spider_copy_tables".
  Spider HA feature is now available!

…

Just in case it wasn't clear from Hakan's post, we are opening up the next Monty Program company meeting in October 7-12 to be a general MariaDB developers meeting. (In fact, we've had a few guests in all of the previous meetings too, but now it's formal and public.) Ever since Sun folded this annual MySQL AB tradition (to save money) there has been people asking when the next meeting would be, since for the developer community outside MySQL AB it was the main networking and information sharing event of the year. Last MySQL user conference we agreed that something needs to be done, and this is it. If you work on any of the MySQL variants, a storage engine, or are otherwise interested in deep architectural MySQL/MariaDB discussions, you are welcome to join and should contact Hakan or My for details. …

This has really been a long debate as to which approach is more performance orientated, normalized databases or denormalized databases. So this article is a step on my part to figure out the right strategy, because neither one of these approaches can be rejected outright. I will start of by discussing the pros and cons of both the approaches. Pros and Cons of a Normalized database design. Normalized databases fair very well under conditions where the applications are write-intensive and the write-load is more than the read-load. This is because of the following reasons: Normalized tables are usually smaller and...