GreenSQLOpenSource is becoming a popular product. We have received a number of inquiries from our users asking about the database firewall performance. In addition, in the new version, we have incorporated numerous optimization patches. In order to get a feel of the gap, we decided to conduct several performance tests and publish their results.

As you probably know, GreenSQLOpenSource works as an SQL proxy. As a result, the system adds additional layer to your existing application infrastructure. In addition, from the network point of view, GreenSQLOpenSource db firewall creates another network socket when connecting to the genuine MySQL server. All this adds some overhead.

We have tested the system using the speedy configuration. Application logs were disabled. In addition, we have build a list of allowed SQL patterns so the system was running in the firewall mode. As a a result, no risk calculation were performed during our …

I just wrote about how Maatkit has gotten some new features for helping people make sure their slaves have an exact copy of the master’s data. This work was largely sponsored by one of Percona’s customers, whose name I have permission to mention: Vantage Media.

Thanks Vantage! Your sponsorship helps many people and businesses.

What’s the new libdrizzle? It’s a complete rewrite of the client library for the Drizzle project, but it also has full support for the current MySQL protocol (4.1+). Right now Drizzle uses the same protocol as MySQL, but work is being done to design a new, more robust protocol. Even when the Drizzle protocol changes, I plan to keep full support for the MySQL protocol since there is a need for a good low-level non-blocking client library. Also, once libdrizzle turns into a full protocol library (server and client packets) it could make for some interesting Drizzle/MySQL hybrid proxies.

Over the weekend I made a lot of progress on the new library, and last night I just finished up the first pass at the core functionality. It can now do full query and result processing. Currently only non-cached results are being used (no store_result() function), but the cached interfaces will be …

This is a post about SYSDATE() and NOW() and CURRENT_TIMESTAMP() functions in MySQL.

Firstly, note is that of these three, only CURRENT_TIMESTAMP() is part of the SQL Standard. NOW() happens to be an alias for CURRENT_TIMESTAMP() in MySQL.

Secondly, note that replication does not work well with non-deterministic functions. And “hey, what time is it?” is non-deterministic. Ask it twice, with a second apart between asking, and both times you get different results (with at least second precision).

You can start to see the problem here….but there’s more…. (more…)

It's a balancing act between high-volume community adoption and enterprise differentiation. But if you do it right, the impact is huge READ MORE

Quite often we need to perform a so-called “MySQL instance audit”. This common DBA procedure should give you a general view of the MySQL environment. You may be interested in a basic understanding of what kind of operation MySQL performs, how much memory does it use, or how well does it look from the performance point of view. There is no easy out-of-the-box way to do such an audit on a MySQL server. You can use SHOW STATUS and check the list of system variables, but this way can hardly be called DBA-friendly.

Fortunately there are several tools to make this process easier. Among most popular are mysqlreport and MySQLTuner. In this post I’d like to give a brief overview of MySQLTuner.

So, what can MySQLTuner do? Quoting the documentation: “MySQLTuner is a script written in Perl that will assist you with your MySQL configuration and make recommendations for …

David Axmark, co-founder of MySQL, has left Sun, which acquired MySQL last year for $1 billion. Axmark's departure comes close on the heels of Monty Widenius' exit, and comes in the midst of a bad week for Sun, when its Linux distribution lead Barton George also quit Sun to join Lombardi Software....

When I set-up a MySQL HA environment for customers I usually do some final fail over tests after configuring the whole beast.

To check if the application behaves like expected I always run my little test application (test.sh) from the server(s) where the customers application runs. It displays "graphically" how the application behaves and you can show to the customer immediately what is going on...

Make sure, that you point it to the VIP (virtual IP) or the LB (load balancer).

It was really useful for me and I recommend you to do your HA fail over tests also at least with this little tool to avoid evil surprises in the future.

When I set-up a MySQL HA environment for customers I usually do some final fail over tests after configuring the whole beast.

To check if the application behaves like expected I always run my little test application (test.sh) from the server(s) where the customers application runs. It displays "graphically" how the application behaves and you can show to the customer immediately what is going on...

Make sure, that you point it to the VIP (virtual IP) or the LB (load balancer).

It was really useful for me and I recommend you to do your HA fail over tests also at least with this little tool to avoid evil surprises in the future.

MySQL University has been running for the last 18 months, and we’ve covered a wide range of topics, from the internals of MySQL right up to Amazon’s EC2, using MySQL in the Solaris/OpenSolaris Webstack and a description of the forthcoming MySQL Online Backup.

Personally, I think they’re great. Obviously many times I am scribe and am there for the sessions, but I listen to lots of the sessions anyway, and I’m yet to be disappointed by the content. What’s really great is that in all the cases the person you are listening to is probably the person that either developed, or helped drive development of the particular function, or, in the case of some of the external tools (EC2, for example), these guys are expert in it. The experience is not quite as thrilling as attending the MySQL User Conference, but the content is just the same.

The problem is that …