We announced our earnings today, and put specifics around our preannouncement from a week ago.

We also greatly increased the transparency of Sun's business by providing line item detail surrounding our most important product categories (and we broke out core elements of our Software business for the first time). If you'd like to listen to our earnings call, just click here - in addition, here's a quick synopsis of the quarter and our business overall.

At a corporate level in Q1, Sun's revenue was down 7% year over year. Growth in our emerging products was more than offset by declines in our traditional, high end products. We were surprised by the magnitude of the decline, which reflected a dramatic slowing in the US and Europe, and the effects the credit crisis is having on our customers - across nearly all geographies and …

Our team is looking at how MySQL can be scaled out to improve performance.  Jenny Chen recently posted preliminary numbers on Solaris Nevada that shows scaling out MySQL with amoeba proxy (two instances that divide the duties) can significantly improve MySQL performance when the single MySQL server encountered disk I/O bottleneck.  The workload that was used was DBT2.  She does mention a few limitations in the conclusions of the report.  Check out her blog for the full results.  It should be noted that these findings should also be applicable to other platforms like Linux.

Not everything is going the wrong way on our planet. There are things that are changing for the better! And one of them is South Africa. Just back from a three-day MySQL related trip to Johannesburg and Pretoria, I saw a lot of well-founded hope around me. The hope is related to less crime, less racial tension, and more economic growth. I share the positive vibes and think they’re founded in reality.

I was in South Africa for the yearly Sun partner event in “Sub-Saharan Africa” or SSA for short. SSA is one of the fastest-growing regions within what is known as “Emerging Markets”, which in itself grows faster than Europe, North America or Asia Pacific. And partners are extremely important, as Sun uses solely indirect sales in the region.

I was so impressed by what I saw that I wrote nine blog …

HW configuration:

Server A: v20z Server(CPU: 2x2193 Mhz, Memory: 4032 MB)

Server B: x4150 Server(CPU: 8x2826 Mhz, Memory: 16384 MB)

SW configuration:

MySQL5.1.24-rc, MySQL proxy 0.61, Amoeba for MySQL 0.31, DBT2 for MySQL

OS versions: Solaris Nevada snv_91

Test: MySQL DBT2 Test using Amoeba For MySQL

amoeba configuration and query routing rule:

#cat amoeba.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="gbk"?>

<!DOCTYPE amoeba:configuration SYSTEM "amoeba.dtd">

<amoeba:configuration xmlns:amoeba="http://amoeba.meidusa.com/">

<server>

<property name="port">2066</property>

<property …

The newest development in the partitioning code
is WL#4571.

This new feature makes it possible to tie a
partition using MyISAM to a specific cache index.
The syntax for how to do is available in the
above worklog entry.

We found this feature to be useful for enabling
higher performance of parallel ALTER TABLE
(WL#2550). When adding
a primary key to a MyISAM table the key cache in
MyISAM limited scalability of Parallel ALTER TABLE
severely, so adding several key caches, essentially
one per partition we can ensure that the ALTER TABLE
can be fully parallelised (all other ALTER TABLE
on MyISAM already scales perfectly).

We also have some ideas on how to solve the base
…

A colleague of mine at Sun/MySQL showed me how to get
statistics from my blog. This was an interesting read
of all statistics. I noted that there was a great
interest in partitioning related information and that
the new partitioning feature mentioned in my blog
2 years ago still attracts a lot of attention.

So I thought it was a good idea to blog a bit more
about what's going on in the partitioning
development. I decided to check out how easy it is
to externalize my development trees on launchpad.
It turned out to be really easy so I simply
put up the development tree for the new partitioning
feature which I described in my last blog.

Launchpad tree

I also externalized the Worklog entry for this
development, unfortunately not a …

I host a MySQL server for use by the Falcon team, and this requires business class broadband service.

Comcast Business Services support has been consistently stellar. Network or line problems are addressed within the same day, and I always get straight through to a knowledgeable person when I call support.

Recently, the coax connector on the cable modem/router snapped loose. I called Business Services, and within two hours a replacement router sat on my desk. I configured the device and called to have them enable it on their network. I got right through."This is Ron. How may I help you?"Twentysomething, confident in tone. A good sign.
"Hi Ron. This is Chris. I just configured a replacement router and need to have it enabled on your network."
Hard stop.
"That is not a router. It …

Today, Giuseppe Maxia gave a presentation on MySQL Sandbox. This was our second MySQL University session using the new conferencing system, Dimdim.

Most attendees arrived in time, but like with any real-life university, some arrived late, and some left during the session. We had an average of 16-17 attendees, and a peak of 19.

Giuseppe presented using a slide set, rather than using the desktop sharing facility that Dimdim offers. Clicking through slides feels real-time, while desktop sharing requires some time for changes to arrive on the receiving end (as we've experienced with the previous session). Also, clicking through slides requires virtually no bandwidth (after the slide set has been uploaded to Dimdim). Giuseppe's voice came over loud and clear. A few attendees reported …

There is also a sandbox for MySQL Cluster!

If you have Linux installed (I have not tested on Solaris) and want to get familiar with MySQL Cluster, or setup a development environment all on your localhost, then MySQL Cluster Sandbox is for you!

Here is the README!

The whole installation is in a single directory and easy to remove.

Open source vendors should focus on value delivered, or risk entering the spiral from paying customer to free user. READ MORE