In previous search benchmarks, I utilized random content generated with Drupal's devel module. In these latest benchmarks, I used an actual sanitized copy of the Drupal.org community website database, with email addresses and passwords removed. The first tests were intended to confirm that Xapian continues to perform well with large amounts of actual data. Additional tests were performed to measure the effect of various MySQL tunings and configurations. The following data was derived from several hundred benchmarks run on an Amazon AWS instance over the past week using the SearchBench module.

These tests confirm that Xapian continues to offer better search performance than Drupal's core search module. Contrary to popular belief, the data also shows that using the InnoDB storage engine for search tables significantly outperforms using the MyISAM storage engine for search tables, especially when your database server has sufficient RAM. The …

I will be speaking on July 29th in New York at an Entrepreneurs Forum on A Free Panel on Cloud Computing. With a number of experts including Hank Williams of KloudShare, Mike Nolet of AppNexus, and Hans Zaunere of New York PHP fame is should be a great event.

The focus of my presentation will be on “Extending existing applications to leverage the cloud” where I will be discussing both the advantages of the cloud, and the complexities and issues that you will encounter such as data management, data consistency, loss of control, security and latency for example.

Using traditional MySQL based applications I’ll be providing an approach that can lead to your application gaining greater power of cloud computing.

About the Author

Ronald Bradford provides …

Welcome to my Linux site, the Linux Bloke.

Donations are requested to help Andrii Nikitin, a MySQL support engineer in Ukraine, provide for his son Ivan who requires a bone marrow transplant operation. The cost of this operation is expected to be between €150,000 - €250,000 ($235,000 - $400,000). Please help us provide Ivan a chance to live.

phpguru.org is now aggregated (?) by PlanetMySQL. MySQL users may want to have a look at: MySQL TableEditor, PHP Datagrid for MySQL and a (much) quicker drop in PEAR::DB replacement. Or you may not - your choice.

Issue Five of MySQL Magazine just came out and it included the results from its Annual MySQL Usage Survey. Among a bunch of other cool information, it asked the question: “What is your favorite blog?” (Q26). The results were as follows:

The first interesting thing that I noticed was that the #1 [...]

phpguru.org is now aggregated (?) by PlanetMySQL. MySQL users may want to have a look at: MySQL TableEditor, PHP Datagrid for MySQL and a (much) quicker drop in PEAR::DB replacement. Or you may not - your choice.

I hear now about a new competition for the MySQL® Users. The ‘MySQL® 5.1 Use Case Competition’ has been just launched by the Community Team @ SUN|MySQL.

If you submit a MySQL® 5.1 Use Case Report to the Community Team by 31 August 2008 you will have a chance of winning:

• 1st-3rd prize: A MySQL Conference & Expo 2009 Pass, including a dinner with MySQL co-founder Michael “Monty” Widenius
• 4th-10th prize: MySQL® Community Contributor T-shirts
• 11th-20th prize: A Sakila mascot (MySQL®’s pet dolphin)

More information at http://forge.mysql.com/wiki/MySQL_5_1_Use_Case_Competition.

[Reminder for the Community Team: the page …

I’m back at my favorite spot at the Orlando airport:

This week has gone bye so fast it’s kinda scary.  I got dragged into one meeting after another design session after another knowledge transfer opportunity for 5 days in a row.  After our long working days, the discussions and talks just continued over dinner and beers.

It was great to meet everyone and as always we had a good time around the office and at the Ale House.  I even managed to stay sober this time around.  Well at least most of the time.

As always, the thing that struck me the most was how fast Pentaho changes.  It’s almost like visiting a different company every time I drop in.  Since I don’t see the day-to-day changes around the office, the difference between the first time I visited (15 people) and now (70+) is striking.  The office space occupied more than doubled for example.

Well, let me tell you, …

Revision: 8 - Last Update: September 03 2008

This is the first part of a series of short articles with a how-to approach about MySQL® Performance Monitoring, Tuning & Auditing. We will see the question from a GUI prospective. In particular we will describe which monitoring-oriented features HoneyMonitor, a GUI for MySQL® currently in alpha development, implements.

I will explain how HoneyMonitor let you

1. install an audit database on your server, without the need of using 3th Party Agents nor using remote repository databases
2. enable the auditing and start monitoring your server
3. tuning your server changing a few suggested list of variables to get better performance.

We will use only the 5.1.x series of the Server as we use some Scheduled Events and the Event Scheduler has been added only in the 5.1 branch. In particular we will use MySQL® 5.1.24-rc. We will also do some tests …