MySQL has sometimes faced criticism for being too relaxed at allowing invalid values, or inserting but truncating values that are out of range. For example:

mysql> CREATE TABLE unsigned_int (a int unsigned);
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.03 sec)

mysql> INSERT INTO unsigned_int (a) VALUES (-1);
Query OK, 1 row affected, 1 warning (0.01 sec)

mysql> SELECT * FROM unsigned_int;
+------+
| a    |
+------+
|    0 |
+------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

In MySQL 5.0 two strict sql_mode options were introduced to be able to change this behaviour:

• STRICT_ALL_TABLES – Behave more like the SQL standard and produce errors when data is out of range.
• STRICT_TRANS_TABLES – Behave more like the SQL standard and produce errors when data is out of range, but only on transactional storage …

In the MySQL team @ Oracle, we’ve been discussing changing the default values for MySQL replication so that they are safer to use.

Specifically:

We're very pleased to announce that MySQL Connect will next year take place from Monday September 29 to Thursday October 2, 2014, in San Francisco. And there will be a welcome reception on Sunday September 28 evening.

During the past 2 years we’ve run MySQL Connect during the weekend prior to Oracle OpenWorld, and we repeatedly got feedback that avoiding the weekend would be better. Well, this is now done! MySQL Connect will be fully aligned with Oracle OpenWorld. This will also enable us to have more room to schedule sessions across the 4 days and to be better integrated within Oracle OpenWorld overall, which was also part of the feedback we’ve got.

We will provide more details down the road but wanted to make sure you could save the dates and make your plans accordingly.

The Call for Papers will likely open in March, so start thinking about your topics now in order to submit them swiftly when it …

I was pleased to see Morgan’s announcement about a fix to an old problem of mine. In March 2012 I complained about MySQL verbosity during installation.

In MySQL 5.7.3, this behavior was changed. While the default is still as loud as it can, you can now add an option (log_error_verbosity) to send only errors to STDERR, which allows you to hide the output of mysql_install_db, and still get the errors, if they occur.

Well done!

However, the same obnoxious verbosity is also in MariaDB 10.0.x. Since I discussed this specific bug with a few MariaDB developers early in 2012, I was disappointed to see this same output when running mysql_install_db with MariaDB. Here’s the same appeal: MariaDB …

The call for participation for Percona Live MySQL Conference 2014 is still open. As part of the review committee, I will be looking at the proposals, and I hope to see many interesting ones.

There is a novelty in the submission form. In addition to tutorials and regular sessions, now you can submit proposals for lightning talks, to which I am particularly interested, as I have organized the lightning talks in the past two editions, and I am in charge to continue the tradition for the next one.

If you want to be a speaker at the conference, here are some tips to get your proposal accepted:

• Propose a topic that you know well;
• Take some time to write a well thought and meaningful proposal: nothing gets me faster to the rejection button than statements like “I want to talk about X, I will …

The CONNECT Storage engine implement the concept of a table made of multiple tables. These underlying tables can be distributed remotely. For example the underlying remote tables can be of ODBC or MySQL table type. this allows to execute distributed queries. What is nice is that we can execute this distributed query with parallelism.

How [...]

Percona Live London 2013 is almost here: November 11-12 2013. Team MariaDB & SkySQL will be present, and here’s an agenda if you’re interested in all things MariaDB:

1. Monday, 11.11.2013 – 2-5pm – What’s New in MariaDB 10 and MariaDB Tools – a tutorial from Ivan Zoratti. This is a hands-on lab, complete with virtual machines provided by Ivan. You’ll also get to see MariaDB Manager from the abstract.
2. Tuesday 12.11.2013 – 9.45-10.00am – What’s New in MariaDB 5.5 and what will happen with MariaDB 10.0 – a keynote from Michael “Monty” Widenius of the …

I am on my way to Argentina, where I will be speaking at the MySQL NoSQL & Cloud Conference & Expo.

I have two talks: one on my pet project MySQL Sandbox and one on replication between MySQL and MongoDB (using another project dear to me, Tungsten Replicator.

It’s my first visit to Argentina and I will try to look around a bit before the conference. And I look forward to see many ex colleagues and well known speakers at the conference. The lineup includes speakers from Percona, EffectiveMySQL, PalominoDB, MariaDB, SkySQL, Tokutek, and OpenStack.

I am looking forward to this trip. My presentation on MongoDB replication is a first for me, and I am always pleased when I can break new ground. I have the feeling that the networking is going to …

• Fact: MySQL 5.6 was released as GA in February 2013
• Fact: MySQL 5.6 has been available with its complete set of features since September 2012
• Fact: On September 21st, Oracle has released MySQL 5.7.2, which is the de facto major release after MySQL 5.6 (5.7.1 was just a token “we’re-still-in-business” release).
• Fact: As of today, there is no GA-ready fork of MySQL 5.6.

Percona Server is still in RC state, while MariaDB, with its runaway version 10, is still in alpha state. Of these releases, Percona Server seems the one in the better shape. Their problem was to adapt Percona Server to the enhanced codebase for 5.6, and the merging problems were bigger than the ones encountered in 5.1 and 5.5. Percona Server is a business oriented fork. It includes specific features for …

On September 21st, during the opening keynote at MySQL Connect 2013, Tomas Ulin disclosed the release of MySQL 5.7.2. This is a milestone release that includes several new features. Unlike the Previous one, which was just a point of pride, where Oracle was stating its continuous commitment to releasing new versions of MySQL. In MySQL 5.7.2, we see several new features:

• First and foremost, performance. The announcement slides say MySQL 5.7.2 is 95% faster than MySQL 5.6 and 172% faster than MySQL 5.5. I don’t know yet in which circumstances these numbers hold true, but I am sure someone at Percona will soon prove or disprove the claim.
• Performance Schema tables for several aspects:
  • …