I've been meaning to post some real-world data on the performance of the Infobright 3.2 release which happened a few weeks ago after an extended release candidate period. We're just preparing our upgrades now, so I don't have any performance notes over significant data sets or complicated queries to post quite yet.

To make up for that, I decided to address a particular annoyance of mine in the community edition, first because it hadn't been addressed in the 3.2 release (and really, I'm hoping doing this would include it into 3.2.1), and second, simply because the engine being open source means I can. I feel being OSS is one of Infobright's biggest strengths, in addition to being a pretty amazing piece of performance for such a simple, undemanding package in general, and not making use of that would be shame. Read on …

I had originally posted this on the 16th of September, but I had been changing hosting providers and such and it has managed to drop through the cracks.  So, if you didn’t see it before here it is..

I have long held the opinon that SSD (Solid State Disk) drives are going to be a major part of the database future. I just checked and I wrote a blog posting about them two years ago. I am not alone in this opinion.  It has long been realized that both I/O access speed and throughput increases have not kept pace with the increases in CPU power and the steadily decreasing cost of RAM. Storage space has increased, but both access speed and throughput performance have only had marginal increases in performance.

Solid state disks have long held the promise of lowered access speeds, especially when it comes to random access.  Even so, prices for SSD drives have been high and space small (compared to standard hard …

Clayton Christensen has some excellent insights on Modularity vs Integration in “The Innovator’s Solution”. I wrote about this for Upstarta.biz. Particularly in the realm of Open Source, modularity is regarded as a panacea – a product, service or design must be modular. But  modularity is not better (or worse) than integration. Like tools, they each have their place, depending on the state of the market/ecosystem where the process/product/service operates. Part of a system can be in a modular phase, where another part of the same system needs integration!

In this context, think of an Open Source project or company’s ability to handle contributions. If the process of interaction between a contributor and the core is not (for whatever reason) clearly defined and predictable, it won’t work. Jamming an additional [in this case …

Your MySQL server is under heavy load or refuses any new connections because MySQL runs out of available threads. Ever wondered why?

For me the easiest way to get a first and very helpful real-time insight in what is happening in your database server is to use the show processlist statement:

mysql> show processlist;
+--------+---------+-----------+-------------+----------------+------+--------------------+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Id     | User    | Host      | db          | Command        | Time | State              | Info                                                             |
+--------+---------+-----------+-------------+----------------+------+--------------------+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| 426144 | DELAYED | localhost | statistics  | Delayed insert |  170 | Waiting for INSERT | …

I spend large portion of my life working on MySQL Performance Optimization and so MySQL Optimizer is quite important to me. For probably last 10 years I chased first Monty and later Igor with Optimizer complains and suggestions. Here are some general ideas which I think can help to make optimizer in MySQL, MariaDB or Drizzle better.

Make it Plugable Every Major optimizer change causes a lot of pain for some of the users. Even if you improve performance 99 our of 100 queries there are going to be countless users complaining about the change. Due to this problem Optimizer Team was more conservative than I think they could have been. The solution is simple - make optimizer pluggable and make it possible to stick to old optimizer behavior with new MySQL Version.

Make Cost Model Adjustable MySQL Optimizer looks at query plan in terms of disk IOs/Seeks in same way for all data sets. In practice some …

I'm pleased to announce the release of Vertical Partitioning storage engine version 0.3.
http://launchpad.net/vpformysql

The main changes in this version are following.
- Add table parameter "choose_table_mode_for_lock".
- Add server parameter "vp_choose_table_mode_for_lock".
  These parameters are used for avoiding deadlock by fixing lock order to table list order.

Please see "99_change_logs.txt" in the download documents for checking other changes.

Enjoy!

Your MySQL server is under heavy load or refuses any new connections because MySQL runs out of available threads. Ever wondered why?

For me the easiest way to get a first and very helpful real-time insight in what is happening in your database server is to use the show processlist statement:

mysql> show processlist;
+--------+---------+-----------+-------------+----------------+------+--------------------+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Id     | User    | Host      | db          | Command        | Time | State              | Info                                                             |
+--------+---------+-----------+-------------+----------------+------+--------------------+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| 426144 | DELAYED | localhost | statistics  | Delayed insert |  170 | Waiting for INSERT | …

Your MySQL server is under heavy load or refuses any new connections because MySQL runs out of available threads. Ever wondered why?

For me the easiest way to get a first and very helpful real-time insight in what is happening in your database server is to use the show processlist statement:

mysql> show processlist;
+--------+---------+-----------+-------------+----------------+------+--------------------+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Id     | User    | Host      | db          | Command        | Time | State              | Info                                                             |
+--------+---------+-----------+-------------+----------------+------+--------------------+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| 426144 | DELAYED | localhost | statistics  | Delayed insert |  170 | Waiting for INSERT | …

Oracle Open World 2009 is just few weeks away and I firmed up my presentation schedule now. I will present three “normal” presentations and couple unconference sessions. I’m arriving in San Francisco few days before the conference (7th of October) get to the Oracle ACE Directors briefing so I’ll spend the first few day in Redwood Shores and then off to Moscone Center.

Before I get to the schedule, if you want to catch up with me during OOW — tweet me @alexgorbachev. You are likely to see me in the OTN Lounge or in “The Cave” if you know what I’m talking about.

Here is a quick summary of my presentations:

My friend Gabriel came up with a working "progress bar" for ALTER TABLE. Until MySQL / Drizzle can do this "natively", this is a pretty neat trick:

http://gabrielcain.com/blog/2009/08/05/mysql-alter-table-and-how-to-observe-progress/