Ryan posted an article on the MySQL Performance Blog about how to use mk-query-digest to analyze and understand your memcached usage with the same techniques you use for MySQL query analysis. This is an idea that came to me during the 2009 MySQL Conference, while talking to our friends from Schooner, who sell a memcached appliance. It suddenly struck me that the science of memcached performance is basically nonexistent, from the standpoint of developers and architects.

This is the 155th edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs.

SQL Server

On the SQL Server blogs this week, CSS SQL Server Engineers demonstrated that using DateDiff can query performance problems in SQL 2005 and 2008.

The kind of problems, perhaps, that Linchi Shea examines in his post on linked server security configuration and how it can hurt you. Linchi writes, …

According to the MailChimp blog there’s a new program in place at Gmail that allows images in a message to be turned on by default with the following requirements:

• There has to be authentication in place (either SPF or DKIM).
• The recipient has to have sent at least 2 messages in the past to the sender.

Now that second one can be a challenge since a lot of senders do not use a reply-to address that their customers are sending to (in fact many use a noreply address), meaning that none of their subscribers will accumulate two sends and therefore never see images on by default.

Essentially senders need to start using a reply-to address that customers can use, and ideally one that they would otherwise use. As an example a support@ address would be used independently of the mailing, adding the …

Have you ever wondered how optimized your Memcached installation is? There is a common misconception that one doesn't have to think too deeply about Memcached performance, but that is not true. If your setup is inefficient, you could:

• Burn Memory
• Waste Network Round-Trips
• Store Keys That Never Get Retrieved
• Have a Low Cache Hit Ratio (i.e. query MySQL too much)
• Suffer a fate too horrible to contemplate.

Percona does a lot of consulting around Memcached, so we try to take a quantitative, scientific approach to measuring memcached performance, just like everything else we do.

memcached is basically a key-value in-memory database, so it works well to analyze its traffic with Maatkit's mk-query-digest tool. You can now use …

At OSCON in 2006, I followed sessions that discussed how open source companies would fare when big corporations come in. Back then there were only a handful of examples of big companies purchasing small open source companies. Three years later, we've witnessed MySQL AB get swallowed by Sun, only to have Sun be swallowed by Oracle. Now there are more open questions than ever and at least three versions of MySQL that are jockeying to continue the MySQL blood-line. Yesterday I attended talks by two of these groups and I have to wonder how the MySQL game will play itself out over time.

The first talk I attended was: "Drizzle: Status, Principles, and Ecosystem" where a number of Drizzle developers shared their thoughts about this project. …

The new Open Source Database Podcast is a companion to the Open Source Database Magazine. Episode one has now been posted and is available for download. For now I am including the show notes below. I will post these notes on the website soon along with all future show notes.

The feed for the podcast is at http://www.osdbzine.net/podcast/osdbpodcast.xml and a direct download of the episode is available here.

Episode Summary

This is the first episode of Open Source Database Podcast. This pod cast is about both open source database servers and the people who develop and use them. The plan is for most episodes to be centered around interviews with various people in the open source community. Kicking …

TheITJobBoard published a report for 18 different types of IT jobs and what salaries they can expect in different part of the UK
I made my own analysis for DBAs using the pandora software inside google spreadsheets
(Please note, that DBAs positions in this survey include Oracle, MS SQL and MySQL DBAs)
DBA Salaries in the UKView more documents from JonathanL.

Original:

The IT Job Board Salary SurveyView more documents from TheITJobBoard.

Today, we’re ready to announce RethinkDB — a new kind of database. It’s been a winding road. For two years, Mike, Leif, and I have been thinking independently on how to bring a breath of fresh air to the database world. Three months ago, we came together to form a company and bring our ideas to reality. In these three months, we’ve raised seed funding from Y Combinator, moved to California, and built a MySQL plugin that implements the core of our vision — a storage engine redesigned for the modern world. With the exception of storage technology, database design has always been beautiful. Now, with dropping costs of storage, the advent of solid state drives, and advances in functional data structures theory, we can finally replace that last messy component of database management systems with an elegant, beautiful solution. …

Important note when upgrading from versions before 3.1:
* MONyog now requires a registration code.
* Do not forget to replace the MONyog.lua script if you use the Query Analyzer with proxy-based sniffing.
* RPM users must uninstall pre-3.1 versions before installing this one.
Please read 3.1 release notes for details.

Changes as compared to 3.11 include:

Features:
* All charts displayed by MONyog can now be exported as PDF/JPG/PNG (from chart context menu).
* Query Analyzer will now sort in descending order as default first time (before it was ascending).

Bug fixes:
* Validation of connection details was not proper when saving.
* In Query Analyzer options that do not apply for sniffer and log files are …

Today, we're ready to announce RethinkDB -- a new kind of database. It's been a winding road. For two years, Mike, Leif, and I have been thinking independently on how to bring a breath of fresh air to the database world. Three months ago, we came together to form a company and bring our ideas to reality. In these three months, we've raised seed funding from Y Combinator, moved to California, and built a MySQL plugin that implements the core of our vision -- a storage engine redesigned for the modern world. With the exception of storage technology, database design has always been beautiful. Now, with dropping costs of storage, the advent of solid state drives, and advances in functional data structures theory, we can finally replace that last messy component of database management systems with an elegant, beautiful solution.

Much …