In MySQL Proxy 0.8 we are added a multi-threaded network-subsystem allowing several networks events be processed in parallel. Early benchmarks show that what we have in trunk basicly works.

But the benchmarks weren't as good as we expected. That's the time where you prepare to get dirty.

While Kay went with lockstat to analyze the proxy on solaris and found that g_atomic_int_get() isn't using native code if built with Sun's CC, I attacked the Linux side with oprofile.

After rebuilding the proxy with -fno-omit-frame-pointer I got the information I was looking for from oprofile:

$ opcontrol --vmlinux=...
$ opcontrol --callgraph=5
$ opcontrol …

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about an acquaintance that had been given some very strange legal advice from a Sun sales rep. It generated a lot of interest, from both people inside Sun and those outside. Here’s what I have learned since:

1). Many people think that keeping your sources’ identities private makes the resulting information lies or FUD. They should talk to Woodward and Bernstein.

2). Many people cannot interpret a question mark at the end of a sentence. I was not making an indictment with my previous post, I was asking a question.

3). Most Sun employees do not make mistakes 1 and 2.

The third point is what prompts this post. Thanks to some concerned people inside Sun, the person who received the bad information now has a clear line of communication to get it resolved. I hope they do so.

Also, Sun has asked that …

Recently, MySQL had an article comparing MySQL and SQL Server at  http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/articles/move_from_microsoft_SQL_Server.html

There is one clarification I would like to make to this article.  The article states that MS SQL Server has row locking, and while this is true, MS SQL Server doesn’t always use row locking and often will resort to page locking.  A page is 8k of data, so, in effect, many rows are locked at the same time even if only one row in that page is being updated.  At high data throughputs, this can lead to serious lock contention and to dead locks, even though the two processes with the contention or dead  lock are updating different rows.   Stated differently, no matter how well you order your multi-row update processes in MS SQL Server you should expect …

I have some bad news and good news. The bad: there is no built in MySQL function for finding a relative date. The good: it's still pretty trivial to get MySQL to calculate it.

The trick is that you need to start with a known date, such as:

mysql> SELECT DATE_FORMAT(CURDATE() - INTERVAL DAYOFWEEK(CURDATE()) DAY, '%W, %M %D, %Y') AS d;
+----------------------------+
| d                          |
+----------------------------+
| Saturday, August 1st, 2009 |
+----------------------------+

That gets you the date for the Saturday that ends the previous week. Then "this Wednesday" or "last Thursday" or almost any other relative date is simple to calculate, provided one caveat. You must do one additional check to see if were already passed the target day of the week.

If today is Tuesday, then "this Wednesday" is 4 days from our reference date above. However if it's already …

My name is Kurt, and I’m a SELECTaholic … wait … wrong place. Strike that.

Thanks very much to Dups and Bryan Alsdorf for getting this all sorted.

A few days before OSCon Henrik Ingo, our newly hired COO, forwarded me a post of Mark Callaghan with the following plaint on the state of certain latest optimizations that had been introduced into the MySQL Server, namely, Multi-Range Read (MRR), Index Condition Pushdown (ICP) and Batched Key Access (BKA).

> I have seen descriptions for each of these features that describes
> them in isolation. Is there one page where they are described
> together? And if there isn't can I convince Sergey and Igor to write a
> new blog post?

Further in the post, Mark points to the slew of …

History
The first example of dual-licensing was probably Ghostscript, which Peter Deutsch licensed first under the GPL and later under the Aladdin Free Public License, but also under a proprietary license.

Inspired by his idea, David Axmark and I released MySQL under similar dual-licensing terms. Dual licensing has since become one of the most common and popular ways to create profit centers around Open Source/Free Software, in addition to support and services around the product.

To be able to bootstrap MySQL Ab, we originally had a license that allowed free usage, but a "pay-for" license if you used MYSQL for commercial usage or on the Windows platform. In 2000 we changed the free license to GPL, mostly to avoid having to explain our own license to everyone.

The basic idea for our dual-licensing was this: if you bought a …

OIN offers cash for patents. CentOS crisis averted. Microsoft denies GPL violation. And more.

Follow 451 CAOS Links live @caostheory on Twitter and Identi.ca
“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

# Open Invention Network offered individual inventors cash for patents, and acquired patents from V_Graph.

# The H Open reported that the management problems at CentOS are now resolved.

# Sam Ramji told Network World in detail why Microsoft believes its Linux IC code did not violate the GPL (from 15m 30s).

# Canonical delivered an on-premise version of …

One of our next targets for Drizzle is a Performance Schema. We have been graced with a design for it by Robin Schumacher who works for MySQL and in the past worked for Embarcadero.

Here is a link to the master blueprint for the design:
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/drizzle/+spec/performance-interface

This is one of the next big projects for Drizzle. We would love to receive feedback on the design. We are very aware that a database cannot be a black box, and this will be a big step in changing this.

Few words about current status of 5.2 branch, its main feature Query Editor, and plans for nearest future about it. 5.2 is still in alpha stage, but we did good progress lately and plan to release beta version soon.
For v5.2.2 major efforts were concentrated on stabilization of existing functionality and code base. There are few improvements in Query Editor visible to end user, while a good bunch of bugs were revealed and fixed – thanks to community for bug reporting. Even more fixes/improvements were merged from 5.1 branch. While we continue to work on stabilization, we plan to add following features before transition to beta stage:

• Client side sorting
• Advanced editor for text fields of recordset
• Saving/retrieving BLOB values
• Option to propagate changes made to recordset to multiple DBMS instances

Keep an eye on new releases, your feedback is very valuable and helps a …