The mysqlbackup client program is now available for download as a feature preview. This program gives information about the produced backup image files and is a complement to the new MySQL 6.0 Backup feature. The program is not yet part of the main MySQL server releases.

So far, we have implemented the first milestone of WL#4534, e.g.:

• Display metadata contained in backup image (i.e the SQL statements)
• List objects contained in the backup image
• Display statistics about the backup image (e.g. compression algorithm)
• Search and display objects of backup image
• Search and display metadata of backup image objects
• In case of problems with reading the image provide as much information
  as possible, e.g. the position of the failure
  

The current preview …

Some time ago I get brand new IBM POWER6 server as the replacement for "old" P5 used to host Oracle database. Because we planed to use advanced virtualization with VIOS + LPAR/DLPAR I conceived the idea to use one spare partition for MySQL tests. Because I had no past experience with it and there is not much documentation all around the web, I tried to set-up system and database traditional way. The first problem I hit was memory allocation and I think it is the best place share my remarks. Let's start from the beginning..

For any reason, you decided to run MySQL database on AIX 5L operating system. You compiled it successfully, configured and.. unluckily database didn't start due to memory allocation problem?

Basically, for some historical reasons AIX OS will allow your application to allocate maximum 256MB of memory per process by default. To use more, you have to use "Large Address Space" memory model so AIX will split …

As promised, here are the DBT2 results for the Intel SSD drive:

As you see the Intel drive blew away all the competition here… even besting another dbt2 score I got from a nice new shiny 8 disk raid 10 system.

Sun's billing data yields a wealth of information READ MORE

A lot of people are wondering whether SSDs make sense with MySQL.  I think that there are cases where they will make sense, and others where they will not.  Here is one test that I came across in a blog entry where the user was excited about SSD performance:

http://labs.cybozu.co.jp/blog/kazuhoatwork/2008/10/benchmarking_ssd_for_mysql.php 

Moving forward, I'm sure that we'll see much more data on this subject and be able to draw more concise lines on when to recommend SSD.

After a few days at home in Munich, I was fortunate enough to fly to the Southern Hemisphere again. This time, I’m in Argentina, planning to visit also Uruguay and Chile.

I plan to meet with many Sun customers and MySQL users, and talk about Open Source. All Libre, some of it even Gratuita. The sign on the right is from Jardin Botánico in Buenos Aires, where I had some time off today. I’m posting some of the more private observations on blogs.arno.fi/isit so as not to spam this list with observations of Jacaranda trees. (Note: At the time of writing, not many of my South American observations are yet live.)

Ever wondered what your PHP application and MySQL actually do? An experimental mysqlnd branch will give you full access to the network communication stream. Using a custom PHP stream filter you can then intercept the communication ... but let's start at the beginning:

When talking about mysqlnd - the mysql native driver for PHP - we always mention the fact it's native in a way that we're, when possible, using PHP infrastructure. The most common example here is the memory management. By directly using PHP's memory we can avoid unnecessary copies of data from the MySQL Client Library's memory into PHP memory.

<?php
$mysqli = mysqli_connect("localhost", "root", "", "test");
$stream = mysqli_conn_to_stream($mysqli);
…

I was asked the question last week of how to tell whether a MySQL installation is 64-bit or 32-bit. Often, MySQL is pre-installed or installed via a package and it is forgotten when and how it was installed. I scratched my head for a little while and just run

/usr/sbin/mysqld --verbose --help
/usr/local/mysql/libexec/mysqld Ver 5.1.25-rc-debug for suse-linux-gnu on i686
(Source distribution)
...

This is somewhat telling and I can tell from having used MySQL that this is 32-bit. However, there's nothing that sticks out like a sore thumb that says one way or the other that is is 64 or 32 bit (ok, maybe "i686" (?))

I was working outside, which seems to be where I become inspired and had a "DUH" moment. The command "file" is the key for this:

32-bit linux:

patg@ishvara:~> file /usr/local/mysql/libexec/mysqld
/usr/local/mysql/libexec/mysqld: ELF …

Update: Sun has expanded its Cloud Computing portfolio with the recent acquisition of Qlayer, a cloud computing company that automates the deployment and management of both public and private clouds.  The Q-layer organization, based in Belgium, is now part of Sun's Cloud Computing business unit which develops and integrates cloud computing technologies, architectures and services.

Cloud computing is about managing petascale data. Sun's server and storage systems can radically improve the data-intensive computing emerging in the cloud. Some clouds are closed platforms that lock you in. Sun's open source philosophy and Java principles form the core of a strategy that provides interoperability for large-scale computing resources. Sun's virtualization solutions for advanced …

The Information Technology Certification Council is a new organization you are going to hear a lot about in the next year. The membership list is a who's who of the computer certification world and their main focus is increasing the value of computer certifications.

Their most visible project to the public will be marketing materials on certifications. The general public does not know a CCIE from a MSCE or CMDBA. Why is this education valuable?

Several years ago I was employed by an on-line recruiting firm and hiring managers asked why they could not find programmers with twenty plus years of Java programming experience. Java was under ten years old at the time and even James Gosling did not have twenty years of Java experience. Twenty plus years of programming experience with a recent emphasis on Java was not what they wanted. They knew exactly what they wanted and would not accept a substitute. Even if what they …