Dear MySQL,

I feel ashamed that I ever wanted you to support 4.0->5.1 replication, and apologize for that. I really understand that it was really egoistic of me even to consider you should be involved in this.

I even understand that 5.0 is running out of active support (I’m not questioning that you’ll stop supporting 4.1 entirely too), and you’ll stop doing pretty much anything to 5.0, except “critical security fixes” (w00t, I managed to get one into 4.1, 8 year old MITM flaw :).

I really understand that supporting more than one release is …

I need to hack MySQL to stop parsing LIMIT a, b. This is a high-risk feature for an OLTP RDBMS. I saw the following on a server that was already too busy.

select ... from foo where ... LIMIT 2000000, 10;
select ... from foo where ... LIMIT 2000010, 10;
select ... from foo where ... LIMIT 2000020, 10;

I hope this didn't start at LIMIT 0, 30 as that is a slow way to fetch rows. Each of the queries above scans ~2M rows from an index before returning the last 30 rows. Queries like this have a lousy response time and make mysqld do too much work.

There is a way to make this query efficient but first I will explain why LIMIT a, b is O(N*N). It has been a long time since I took an algorithms course, so I apologize in advance for incorrect terminology. This assumes an index exists for the columns in the ORDER BY clause. When a sequence …

As long as the whole world is chasing this meaningless “NoSQL” buzzword, we should recognize that InnoDB is usable as an embedded database without an SQL interface. Hence, it is as much of a NoSQL database as anything else labeled with that term. And I might add, it is fast, reliable, and extremely well-tested in the real world. How many NoSQL databases have protection against partial page writes, for example?

It so happens that you can slap an SQL front-end on it, if you want: MySQL.

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What on earth is Monty (and Richard) thinking? How can you spin around 180 and expect to come of believable? How can suddenly the GPL be the wrong choice? How can suddenly OSS depend on proprietary sales? Anyways, even without this change of minds, I do not believe in their arguments. I also do not hold stock in any of the involved companies (well I do not hold any direct stock in any company only indirectly by way of a few retirement funds I hold), so why do I keep posting on this? The reason is that I think this kind of stuff hurts OSS. It creates the kind of FUD we were worried about Microsoft spreading about OSS. Now that they are shutting up more and more, some seem to feel a void that they need to fill with some FUD of their own. To me Monty is just abusing the lack of understanding but the growing interest from the EU commission about open source to get his baby back on the cheap, or at least as much control as he can, since after all his baby …

I got a call from Monty today, and he told me that its crunch-time: the European Commission is about to come up with a decision on the status of Oracle’s purchase of Sun Microsystems. The part that interested me verbally, and he wrote (you should read: Monty says: Help saving MySQL), was this:

Instead of just working out this with the EC and agree on appropriate remedies to correct the situation, Oracle has instead contacted hundreds of their big customers and asked them to write to the EC and require unconditional acceptance of the deal.

Monty has a simple …

It has been a tough Autumn for all of us so it is a pleasure to finally blog on some good news! O'Reilly has finally announced the next MySQL User Conference.

read more

My boss Monty has issued a call to action. It looks like the European Commission is set to rule on the Sun/Oracle merger, and Oracle has used its clout with its customers to generate a mass-mail campaign. So now it’s time for the Free Software community to do the same.

First, let me again say that I am employed by Monty Program, and so this request is not coming from a wholly disinterested party.

Second, the idea that Oracle should not acquire MySQL without limitations or conditions has been championed by such luminaries as Richard Stallman. While Eben Moglen wrote a missive on behalf of Oracle, his idea that any fork using GPL code has the exact same business opportunities Oracle has is, plainly, absurd. It shows a deep misunderstanding of how MySQL’s dual licensing has worked to build a viable business from Free Software. In short, …

That’s right, I said InnoDB+, with a “plus” at the end. I didn’t know it existed until, while following some links from Monty’s appeal to save MySQL, I decided to read a Groklaw post that links to Eben Moglen’s letter to the EU Commission, which includes this text:

Innobase could therefore have provided an enhanced version of InnoDB, like Oracle’s current InnoDB+, under non-GPL license, …

I don’t know anything more. Do you?

Related posts:

1. What data types does your …

I’ve released version 1.1.5 of my improved Cacti templates for MySQL and other components of a LAMP application. This is a pure bug-fix release. One of the bug fixes prevents spikes in graphs, but requires you to rebuild your RRD files. There are upgrade instructions on the project wiki for this and all releases. Use the project issue tracker to view and report issues, and use the project mailing list to discuss the templates and scripts.

As long as the whole world is chasing this meaningless “NoSQL” buzzword, we should recognize that InnoDB is usable as an embedded database without an SQL interface. Hence, it is as much of a NoSQL database as anything else labeled with that term. And I might add, it is fast, reliable, and extremely well-tested in the real world. How many NoSQL databases have protection against partial page writes, for example?