Here’s something that’s not really documented anywhere (unless you count ha_innodb.cc as a source of server documentation). You may have some idea about the MySQL/Drizzle row buffer format. This is passed around the storage engine interface: in for write_row and update_row and out for the various scan and index read methods.

If you want to see the docs for it that exist in the code, check out store_key_val_for_row in ha_innodb.cc.

However, there is another format that is passed to your engine (and that your engine is expected to understand) and for lack of a better name, I’m going to call it the key tuple format. The first place you’ll probably see this is when implementing the index_read function for a Cursor (or handler in MySQL speak).

You get two things: a pointer to the buffer and the length of the buffer. Since a key can be made up of multiple parts, some of which can be NULL and some of which can be of …

MySQL Workbench 5.2.16 is a beta release, which comes with upgraded query browser, upgraded system administrator and addition features of workbench as a all in one bundle.

I was using workbench 5.0 earlier and the changes in 5.2.16 is very much visible. Best thing I could utilize is printing the ER diagrams to pdf files and other file formats. It’s now lot more easier to use and seems like many bugs have been addressed.

The 5.2.16 beta release is enabled to store passwords in OSX-keychain, gnome-keyring or on windows in a encrypted password-vault-file
New wizard added and reworked the “new server instance”.
Features like SQL templates from object context-menu to copy statements to clipboard or right into the query area
Administration module stabilization has been improved
Added option to change the placement of the sidebar in query mode (windows only currently)

Optimization options where you …

The Tokutek/Sunfish entry into the next America’s Cup promises to bring the America’s cup back to the USA’s east coast. The sailboat, named '; Update Race set time=1 where Team='Tokutek (we’re trying to win using a SQL injection attack) features a single-hull pontoon-type hull carrying a lateen sail mounted to an un-stayed mast. The fiberglass hull carries a crew of one or two. The double-plus secret keel technology features a daggerboard keel, an overall length of 4.22m, a beam of 1.24m, and a hull weight of 59kg. The 6.0m2 mainsail provides a D-PN of 100.7, and an on-board computer comprising an Android in a zip-lock sandwich bag running MySQL with TokuDB.

April 1, 2010, Totutek, Inc., announced the acquisition of Oracle Corporation. “Tokutek has long been a supporter of open-source software” said John Partridge, CEO of Tokutek. “Oracle is an innovative small company the develops database front ends such as MySQL. Tokutek intends to continue developing the MySQL technology and expand our commitment to open-soure software.” Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s role has not been determined. Other than a statement that the transaction is an all-stock transaction, terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

So, Open Query is going to move to Silicon Valley. We all know there’ve been a few booms (and accompanying busts), but it is -still- where much of the big business of the online (and thus database) world is; and particular with projects/products like OQGRAPH, it makes sense for us now. Of course we can (and) do our other services from anywhere, but it’s quite important to be local to more of our clients – can’t beat face-to-face contact, right?

About half of our people will be in Santa Clara for the upcoming MySQL conference anyway, so that’s also an excellent time to meet (we don’t, often, in real life) and plan ahead.

More later.

April Fools! We aren’t switching to Lisp (as much as we love the language). We couldn’t resist having a bit of fun.

Over the past few months we’ve had many architectural discussions about the future of database technology. It quickly became apparent to us that C++, the language we used to develop RethinkDB, is not sufficiently expressive to build the next-generation database product. We realized that in order to design the database system of the future, we need to use a programming language of the future as well.

We did a quick survey of programming languages and eventually narrowed down our choices to Erlang, Haskell, and Common Lisp. Two years ago, Damien Katz of CouchDB laid out the reasons why Erlang is a poor choice for database products. Many of his arguments resonated with us, and we made a wise decision not to …

I'll be speaking at IPC Spring in Berlin between May 31 and June 2 this year. My talk is on MySQL partitioning. It will have more information than the talk I did at ConFoo in March. The talk will be on Tuesday, June 1st.

If you're in or around Berlin at that time, drop in.

OSScamp returns to Chandigarh within 6 months for a splendid show on April 10th, 2010, at Chitkara Educational Trust, Chandigarh. Organized by the will and initiative of two 14 year old school kids, OSScamp Chandigarh has also received a good response from the tech community in Chandigarh and promises to be a grand FOSS event in the city. OSScamps are India's premier FOSS Unconference - an informal/casual event where the emphasis is put on participative and collaborative knowledge sharing over the traditional one-way sharing model. Tweetups are meetups of local twitter users, who come together to network with each other and discuss the world around them. The event schedule is as follows: …

OSScamp returns to Chandigarh within 6 months for a splendid show on April 10th, 2010, at Chitkara Educational Trust, Chandigarh. Organized by the will and initiative of two 14 year old school kids, OSScamp Chandigarh has also received a good response from the tech community in Chandigarh and promises to be a grand FOSS event in the city. OSScamps are India's premier FOSS Unconference - an informal/casual event where the emphasis is put on participative and collaborative knowledge sharing over the traditional one-way sharing model. Tweetups are meetups of local twitter users, who come together to network with each other and discuss the world around them. The event schedule is as follows: …

Unnoticed by many, DRBD ports have been spreading for some time on non-Linux platforms. AVS for (Open-)Solaris has been around for a while, and HAST for FreeBSD joined the club last autumn.

And now, Windows. We have received a generous grant (from a source not wishing to have their identity disclosed in public) to fund a port to the Windows Server platform. Development work on this port has commenced back in mid-January.

It’s pretty exciting technology. Rather than tying in with the standard Windows block layer infrastructure, DRBD-W (that’s just a working title, we’ll eventually come up with a spiffier marketing name) is at the core of a brand new storage architecture. Termed Hyper-S, said architecture is actually a highly scalable, extremely light weight, distributed storage …