Due to illness, the MySQL University session "Using DTrace with MySQL" has been moved to February 12th, 2009. Sorry for the short notice (blame it on the flu which came on short notice, too.)

As a bonus, here's the MySQL University schedule for the beginning of next year:

After getting sysbench running properly with a scalable memory allocator (see last post), I can now return to what I was originally testing - what memory allocator is best for the 5.1 server (mysqld).

This stems out of studies I have made of some patches that have been released by Google. You can read about the work Google has been doing here.

I decided I wanted to test a number of configurations based on the MySQL community source, 5.1.28-rc, namely:

• The baseline - no Google SMP patch, default memory allocator (5.1.28-rc)
• With Google SMP patch, mem0pool enabled, no custom malloc (pool)
• With Google SMP patch, mem0pool enabled, linked with mtmalloc (pool-mtmalloc)
• With Google SMP patch, mem0pool disabled, linked with tcmalloc (TCMalloc)
• With Google SMP patch, mem0pool …

After getting sysbench running properly with a scalable memory allocator (see last post), I can now return to what I was originally testing - what memory allocator is best for the 5.1 server (mysqld).

This stems out of studies I have made of some patches that have been released by Google. You can read about the work Google has been doing here.

I decided I wanted to test a number of configurations based on the MySQL community source, 5.1.28-rc, namely:

• The baseline - no Google SMP patch, default memory allocator (5.1.28-rc)
• With Google SMP patch, mem0pool enabled, no custom malloc (pool)
• With Google SMP patch, mem0pool enabled, linked with mtmalloc (pool-mtmalloc)
• With Google SMP patch, mem0pool disabled, linked with tcmalloc (TCMalloc)
• With Google SMP patch, mem0pool …

Hi!

Recently I wrote about how glad I was to see two of my proposals for the upcoming MySQL Conference approved.

I am absolutely thrilled to see my third proposal has been approved as well: "Starring Sakila: data warehousing explained, illustrated and subtitled". I'm very proud to announce that I'm doing this talk together with Matt Casters, chief data integration of Pentaho and creator of the popular ETL/Data Integration suite Kettle (a.k.a Pentaho data integration).

During this 45-minute seminar, Matt and I will take the …

When MySQL 5.1 first went GA I had the same knee jerk reaction as most of the community, “It’s not ready! There are still bugs!”. After thinking about it for a week or so I don’t think this matters. It’s true that MySQL isn’t really ready for GA but it doesn’t matter since most MySQL users I know wait several releases before even trying out a new GA release anyway. This varies wildly of course. Some users love the bleeding edge while others are still back on 4.1. This isn’t MySQL specific either. We do the same thing with most software. I don’t like that MySQL changed their requirements for a RC candidate to move 5.1 along but for most users it doesn’t matter. We will sit quietly and wait for 5.1 to stabilize before even thinking about deploying it. I’ll give it another six months.

Messy gift-wrapping service 'Crapwrap' launched by gadget retailer Firebox

I reckon this is quite brilliant, and I think a nice example of a disruptive offering whereby the existing market is actually overservering the needs of a group of clients. So these guys take "good enough" to a whole other level, and it doesn't even have to be cheaper. Very cool.

And on that note...Dear Santa,
Can I please please have USB pencil sharpener for xmas?
Many of my training students and conference attendees have one of the illustrious Open Query transactional writing implements (with rollback), made from recycled newspaper (tightly rolled up, you can read it while sharpening!) but I actually haven't got a proper USB sharpener for it yet. I would take it with me while travelling, but the main problem has been …

I am pleased to announce the release of Wordcraft 0.6.  I have been using it for a month or so now and I am learning some things.

I had been having trouble logging in lately from multiple places.  So, instead of trying to work on the built in session handling I had written, I took my own advice (use stuff that exists) and just switched to PHP sessions.  All the cookie stuff is worked out and I can get a lot done with just a little work.  PHP sessions make me a little nervous.  If you have lots of applications installed on the same site that use them, you can get some odd behavior.  But, why reinvent the wheel right?

I have found myself wanting to save a post while working on it.  To do that before, I would have to uncheck the Published box.  To solve this, I changed the behavior of the Save …

If you are a programmer, you, by definition, belong to the elite [awesome] human breed called geeks. If you know how to code in Python or Ruby, you might even think you’re pretty hot shit. But none of that compares in hotshitness to what you are about to learn.

Allow me to introduce LOLCODE – perhaps the most serious and, for some, cryptic, programming language. It is Turing-complete and uses an advanced compiler called Brainfuck (I’m still totally serious, and by the way if you’ve never heard of LOLCATS, then you’re not spending nearly enough time on the Internets. See the funny button that looks like a cross at the …

The Sun Fishworks guys were nice enough to invite me for a demo of their new 7000 series storage device.

We bang the heck out of our IO systems here at Spinn3r so having more options is always welcome.

Bryan Cantrill, one of the original DTrace developers, worked on this bad boy so there’s obviously going to be an emphasis on performance analysis.

This is one of the main competitive advantages of the 7000 series.

Out of the box you have a full admin console for performance tuning. It doesn’t stop at just raw IOs because they’ve instrumented it with a bunch of dtrace scripts.

You can view IOPS per file, CPU, make runtime tuning and configuration changes. Basically, the entire …

The one thing that has consumed my days (and nights) recently, has been the organising of the MySQL Conference & Expo 2009 (hereinafter, referred to as the CE2009).

For starters, we’ve had 356 proposals. That basically provides a 1:3 acceptance:rejection ratio. So the voting committee had a really, really hard task to look at talks. Some even cross-referenced submissions with other submissions. Some even made suggestions of combining talks (successful, even). So my great thanks to the voting committee for the CE2009 - you guys all rock.

Then, once the voting committee has done the hard work, you’ve got to sanely schedule the talks. This is really, not an easy task. Very quickly, you realise that you want to be in all track, and you’ve got to split yourselves. This, being impossible, however, leaves room for the community (and in the past, …