This Thursday (January 29th), we're continuing our series of sessions on MySQL performance measuring and improvements with David Lutz' presentation titled Scalability Challenges in an InnoDB-based Replication Environment. David works in the Performance and Applications Engineering department at Sun Microsystems, so again, expect to get some deep insights into the inner workings of the MySQL Server.

David is based in California, so note that this session will take place in the morning (America) or evening (Europe), respectively.

For MySQL University sessions, point your browser to this page. You need a browser with a working …

Time for another East Coast tour -- not to worry am planning on a central and western tour as well, but we're still working out the details to see if it will happen!

Next week, I'll be attending a Sun Microsystems "Hatchery" event talking to startups in New York so I'll be in NYC Monday and Tuesday (Feb 2/3). Wednesday I'll Amtrak it to Boston where I'll meet the Boston MySQL Meetup and talk about MySQL 5.1's Event Scheduler. I'll then travel to Providence. I don't have any meetings scheduled for Providence but I'll work from a friend's house and come back on a cheap flight to Montreal the Monday after.

Will you be in any of these areas? Do you want to meet up? I have no problems ducking out during the day to meet any developer, mysql user, customer or dba. Just let me know on this blog how to get in touch with you or drop me an email to dups -at- sun -dot- com.

Now the cool part is that I will be trying …

If you read this blog, you should probably sign the petition !

Thanks to Bernardo Damele, the lib_mysqludf_sys package hosted by the Repository for MySQL UDFs can now boast a new sys_eval() function. You can read the details here on his blog. Bernardo also created a similar function for PostgreSQL.

Thank you, Bernardo!!!

sys_eval() is quite like …

BLOBs have performance limits due to the way they are currently handled by mysql. First I will give you a little background info, then describe the problem, and potential solutions.

BLOB is an acronym for Binary Large Object. It is a datatype available in Mysql in 4 different sizes. There are also 4 text data types that are almost the same as BLOBs accept they contain string information instead of binary information. Text also has different comparison characteristics than BLOBs since it is a string oriented type. BLOBs can be used to store JPEG files or any other large binary data. BLOB data types come in 4 sizes: tiny, regular, medium, and long which have size limitations respectively of 25 bytes, 64 KB, 16 MB, and 4GB.

Ok, so here is the issue: when a mysql storage engine returns a BLOB from disk to mysql it has to provide a contiguous buffer where the data is stored and a pointer to that buffer. In other words "The …

The problem Every once in a while it happens. A customer comes to us for a review of their site or application. We have our initial interview and start picking up the signs: they are developing their product alone. They are self-taught, self made men/women. They word certain concepts in slightly strange way. Then, we log [...]

I realized tonight exactly why MySQL’s default behavior of silent truncation bothers me.

It reminds me of people who use a ticketing system and close every ticket as soon as they are done working on the issue instead of actually asking the other party if they are satisfied, because closing more tickets make it look like they’re doing more work.

It reminds me of workers at fast food restaurants who hit the button to make the order disappear as if they have already served me my food, because then their throughput times are faster.

Similarly, with MySQL’s default behavior of silent truncation, it’s as if the database server is saying “the fewer database errors raised, the better.” As in the previous two examples, the metrics do not matter if the quality of service is poor — particularly when the quality of service is poor specifically *because* people are trying to meet the metrics instead of the actual goal …

Aka Arjen's head ;-)
So this was at the conference dinner of Linux.conf.au 2009 in Hobart Tasmania. There's always at least one auction, and for some reason it has become tradition to a) bundle in extras with the original auction item and b) for some of those extras to involve removal of facial hair.

As described earlier, my hair was a package deal with Bdale Garbee's beard, and it was later bundled with Linus Torvalds turning into a barber for the day. So here's the fun in action...
I think Linus did a great job, having practiced previously only on his dog (who did not like it). The organic kernel hack appears bug-free, there was no bleeding, and I even have both my ears still.

In this case it was all even fairly appropriate in "shave for a cure" context, since the target …

Prior to MySQL 5.1, it wasn’t all that easy to find the worst running SQL on a MySQL instance. And truth be told, MySQL still has a ways to go before it’s an effortless process. But, the good news is there are some new aids in MySQL 5.1 and MySQL Enterprise that do make it more efficient to find and troubleshoot bad SQL code that’s hiding inside a MySQL instance. Let’s take a quick tour through these new features and see what help they provide.

Developer.Com has selected MySQL Workbench as the best database tool of 2009!

Competing behind Workbench were:

• Altova DatabaseSpy® 2008
• LINQ (Microsoft® .NET Language Integrated Query)
• SQL Server® 2008 Reporting Services
• Oracle SQL Developer