Announced at MySQL Sunday was the Release Candidate edition of MySQL 5.5.6. Also noted by Geert where he points out the default storage engine is now InnoDB.

However, for those from a background other then MySQL there is still a gotcha.

mysql> show global variables like 'autocommit';
+---------------+-------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+---------------+-------+
| autocommit    | ON    |
+---------------+-------+

Unlike Oracle for example, the default autocommit is on.

Doing some other boundary conditions, it is no longer possible to disable InnoDB on startup which you would of course expect.

$ bin/mysqld_safe --skip-innodb &
$ tail error.log

101003 15:33:32 [Note] Plugin 'InnoDB' is disabled.
101003 15:33:32 [ERROR] Unknown/unsupported storage engine: InnoDB
101003 15:33:32 [ERROR] Aborting

MyISAM however can’t be removed and …

It turns out that the overhead of dynamic linking on Linux amd64 is 2 CPU cycles per cross-module call. I usually take forever to get to the point in my writing, so I thought I would change this for once :-)

In MySQL, there has been a historical tendency to favour static linking, in part because to avoid the overhead (in execution efficiency) associated with dynamic linking. However, on modern systems there are also very serious drawbacks when using static linking.

The particular issue that inspired this article is that I was working on MWL#74, building a proper shared libmysqld.so library for the MariaDB embedded server. The lack of a proper libmysqld.so in MySQL and MariaDB has caused no end of grief for packaging Amarok for the various Linux distributions. My patch …

all-schemas is a powerful that helps developers/administrators run multiple SQL statements on all or selected databases on a MySQL db server.

This week I was one of the presenters at the first Surge Scalability Conference in Baltimore. An event that focused not just on one technology but on what essential tools, technologies and practices system architects need to know about for successfully scaling web applications.

While MySQL is an important product in many environments, it is only one component for a successful technology stack and for many organizations is one of several products that manage your data.

My presentation was on the common MySQL scalability mistakes and how to avoid them. This is a problem/solution approach and is a companion talk with Successful MySQL Scalability which describes design for successfully scalability …

opensource-db-tools is a set of open source command line scripts like maatkit that will help database developers and administrators perform day-to-day database tasks easily and efficiently.

A common story: You’ve got some connection, either it’s busy running something it shouldn’t be, it’s in Sleep but holding some important lock, or you just don’t know why it’s connected to your database server in the first place. You see it in your SHOW PROCESSLIST like so:

mysql> show processlist G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
     Id: 5979887
   User: root
   Host: localhost:55997
     db: NULL
Command: Sleep
   Time: 475
  State: 
   Info: NULL

How do you find that client, especially if it’s on another host? MySQL is providing you all the information you need above: localhost:55997. Of course localhost is the host or IP address, and 55997 is the source port of the socket; the port number (usually randomly assigned) on the far end of the socket, from the MySQL server’s perspective. You can turn that number into something useful—the PID and user—, by running the following …

Looks like the error checking function’s code above got mangled. Basically, check value returned by SQLSTRINGCONNECT. If less than 1, there’s an error. Use AERROR() function to retrieve an array that includes error details. Look up AERROR in VFP’s help file for some guidance there if you need it. Once you have that information you can pass it on to the user, and exit.

I was fumbling with this myself, and found excellent information about the various ODBC command options you can use with MySQL here:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/connector-odbc-configuration-connection-parameters.html

You can use DSN-less connections by setting up and storing a connection string such as:
m.cConnStr = “Driver={MySQL ODBC 5.1 Driver};Server=www.yourserver.com;Port=3306;Database=yourdatabase;User=yourmysqluser;Password=yourmysqlpassword;Option=67108864″

and the last parameter, “Option” you would set to a number that is the sum of the values of each option you want to enable (enumerated on the above link).

Once you have your SQL connection string correct and including the options you want, simply pass that connection string to VFP’s SQLSTRINGCONNECT …

Welcome to Log Buffer. The weekly roundup of posts, and news of what’s happening in the database world.

At Pythian, we’re pretty much recovered from a hectic Oracle OpenWorld 2010, and I’m no longer an OOW virgin. What an experience! I had the pleasure of meeting many of you Log Buffer readers and contributors at the Annual Blogger’s Meetup at Jillian’s. Great to put faces to names. And I now officially feel like “Vanessa from Log Buffer”, as many of your t-shirts will show.

Many thanks to Marc Fielding for providing the hot items for this week’s post, in …

Surprisingly, obtaining the version of the MySQL Enterprise Monitor from the command line is not as obvious as one woud think. Generally, with most MySQL programs, you can use the –version option passed to the program to obtain this information (such as you can with the mysqld, the MEM agent, and MySQL proxy).

I realize this is not too common of a problem, but hopefully this will help someone out there.

There is a version.sh (Linux) and version.bat (Windows) included in /opt/mysql/enterprise/monitor/apache-tomcat/bin, which will output everything but the MEM version:

root@chris-linux:/opt/mysql/enterprise/monitor/apache-tomcat/bin# ./version.sh
Using CATALINA_BASE:   /opt/mysql/enterprise/monitor/apache-tomcat
Using CATALINA_HOME:   /opt/mysql/enterprise/monitor/apache-tomcat
Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: /opt/mysql/enterprise/monitor/apache-tomcat/temp
Using JRE_HOME:       /opt/mysql/enterprise/monitor/java
Server version: Apache …