The latest from the MySQL community

Yesterday I helped someone who was seeing a lot of "server has gone away" error messages on his website. While investigating this problem, I noticed several things amiss, which appeared to be related but really weren't. The biggest measurable sign was

PLAIN TEXT CODE:

1. [percona@server ~]$ mysqladmin ext | grep Abort
2. | Aborted_clients                | 14835        |
3. | Aborted_connects               | 15598        |

These two status variables are actually unrelated (see the manual page that explains them). The first was related to the errors the client was seeing: the server was closing inactive connections after a while, and I fixed it by increasing the wait_timeout …

We are always looking at different ways to help promote, inform and identify contributers, users and supports for Drizzle.

One way is to join the Linked In Drizzle group (click here when logged in). You will already see a few MySQL die hards, but also the need breed of names that are part of Drizzlemania.

I recently purchased a new Dell 1525 laptop running Ubuntu 8.04. I've been in need of a new laptop for about a year, and decided to take the plunge and see how good a Linux based laptop from Dell really is. My needs are fairly modest. I'm not a gamer, and don't watch many videos. Mainly it's used for blogging, internet, OpenOffice, IRC/IM, listening to podcasts and programming. Portablity is only somewhat important, mostly it'll be used 80% on a desk with the remaining time mobile.

Model: Dell Inspiron 1525N
Price as reviewed: $749
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo T7250 (2 Ghz/800 Mhz FSB/2MB Cache)
OS: Ubuntu 8.04 with DVD playback
Screen: Glossy 15.4" widescreen (1280x800)
…

I recently purchased a new Dell 1525 laptop running Ubuntu 8.04. I've been in need of a new laptop for about a year, and decided to take the plunge and see how good a Linux based laptop from Dell really is. My needs are fairly modest. I'm not a gamer, and don't watch many videos. Mainly it's used for blogging, internet, OpenOffice, IRC/IM, listening to podcasts and programming. Portablity is only somewhat important, mostly it'll be used 80% on a desk with the remaining time mobile.

Model: Dell Inspiron 1525N
Price as reviewed: $749
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo T7250 (2 Ghz/800 Mhz FSB/2MB Cache)
OS: Ubuntu 8.04 with DVD playback
Screen: Glossy 15.4" widescreen (1280x800)
…

We've discussed today how we should implement MySQL Version advisory in mk-audit tool. One obvious questions was to look at the end of life - it is often bad idea to run MySQL versions past end of life as even security bugs may not be fixed in these (though do not get paranoid, if you're running MySQL in isolated environment the risk may be low).
So how does EOL schedule looks ?

MySQL defines Active Lifecycle and Extended Lifecycle for release where first one is 2 years since initial GA release and second is further 3 years of life in "critical bug fixes only" mode with releases available for premium (Silver+) Support offerings.

For MySQL Community users this means only releases within Active Life Cycle will be made. For example MySQL 4.1 had end of its …

After my previous post there were questions raised about Index Merge on Multiple Indexes vs Two Column Index efficiency. I mentioned in most cases when query can use both of the ways using multiple column index would be faster but I also went ahead to do some benchmarks today.

I'm using couple of simple tables:

PLAIN TEXT SQL:

1. CREATE TABLE `t1000idxmerge` (
2.   `i` int(11) NOT NULL,
3.   `j` int(11) NOT NULL,
4.   `val` char(10) NOT NULL,
5.   KEY `i` (`i`),
6.   KEY `j` (`j`)
7. ) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
8.  
9. CREATE TABLE `t1000idx2` (
10.   `i` int(11) NOT NULL,
11.   `j` int(11) NOT NULL,
12.   `val` char(10) NOT …

Next week I'll be doing a webcast with Paul Clenahan on the topic of how software developers and OEMs can leverage open source principles (not just open source). Paul is from Actuate (the company behind BIRT development and the BIRT Exchange).

It's not often that people talk about the community side of commercial software development. The principles behind open source, like open and modular architecture or user/developer extensibility are often ignored by commercial software firms. Some are starting to embrace the practices that have made open source successful without necessarily opening their source code. This is part of an ongoing shift in the software industry as it struggles to cope with commoditization, increased compeitiveness, and (in some sectors) the …

Newsflash: Perl 6 is not dead (in case you thought it was)!

I stumbled upon this most excellent series of posts by Moritz Lenz of perlgeek.de that describe the differences between Perl 5 and the upcoming Perl 6 (thanks to Andy Lester for the link). The posts are done in the form of tutorials, which helps comprehension. Simply awesome, Moritz.

It seems like Perl 6 is going to be a lot more object oriented, but such orientation is optional and not forced upon programmers, like in, say, Java. It warms my heart that I will be able to do this (you did see the …

Holy cow... It really works!! (Just like they promised!)

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Crisis has struck! This week’s Log Buffer editor had to beg off at the eleventh hour when his time vanished. It happens. But, in every crisis, an opportunity (well . . .  maybe, maybe not). The opportunity — an open discussion of this week’s best database blog articles. Readers in control.

Log Buffer is always looking for editors, so if you’d like to step forward and publish one on your own blog, read the Log Buffer guidelines and send me an email.

I’m going to go through my bookmarks and add my own presently. I hope to hear from you!