The latest from the MySQL community

For me, GSOC was a learning experience. I feel that I’ve learned more

from doing this than I have over the course of all my university

classes. So for me, the things that I’ve learned break down as

follows:

Technical things:

1. Installed cygwin and learnt some basic stuff regarding cygwin. Have never really used cygwin before.

2. Learnt how to use bkclient for downloading mysql source code which was replaced by bazaar in the middle of GSOC. Again I have never realy used a distributed version control system.

3. Learnt how to use bazaar which has more functionality than bkclient

4. Downloaded the mysql source code and built it on Windows as well as Linux.

5. Learnt how to debug the mysql source on Windows using Visual Studio …

For me, GSOC was a learning experience. I feel that I’ve learned more

from doing this than I have over the course of all my university

classes. So for me, the things that I’ve learned break down as

follows:

Technical things:

1. Installed cygwin and learnt some basic stuff regarding cygwin. Have never really used cygwin before.

2. Learnt how to use bkclient for downloading mysql source code which was replaced by bazaar in the middle of GSOC. Again I have never realy used a distributed version control system.

3. Learnt how to use bazaar which has more functionality than bkclient

4. Downloaded the mysql source code and built it on Windows as well as Linux.

5. Learnt how to debug the mysql source on Windows using Visual Studio …

I keep seeing this posts by some of the manager types on planet MySQL about how they or some other guy is worrying about open source vendors not raking in billions or are not stealing billions of money out of peoples pockets that should not be playing on the stock market and things along those lines. While I do agree that its great to see open source software flourish .. actually let me clear that up, why do I even care if open source software flourishes? I care because I think open source software enables a different kind of growth for society, one that is shared, one that lowers barriers, one that I feel is more in tune with a world at peace.

Of course I want people that take part in this to be able to provide themselves and their families a decent life. But the fact of the matter is, these people do not need …

Week 9 (21st – 28th July)

Key Accomplishments Last Week

1. Read about the mysql Benchmarking suite and the importance of this suite for mysql.
2. Covered the chapter on Debugging in “Expert Mysql” by Charles A.Bell.
3. The chapter on debugging helped me to get to speed to debug mysql source code on Windows using Visual Studio
4. I also practiced debugging mysql on Linux using ddd and gdb.
5. P.S. I would like to thank Brian, Collin and Leslie for their patience and support. If God wills, I should start some serious hacking very soon.

Key Tasks that stalled last Week

• 1. Installation of perl interface for executing the Benchmarking suite
     1. Have some issues with the DBD::mysql module on cygwin …

Week 9 (21st – 28th July)

Key Accomplishments Last Week

1. Read about the mysql Benchmarking suite and the importance of this suite for mysql.
2. Covered the chapter on Debugging in “Expert Mysql” by Charles A.Bell.
3. The chapter on debugging helped me to get to speed to debug mysql source code on Windows using Visual Studio
4. I also practiced debugging mysql on Linux using ddd and gdb.
5. P.S. I would like to thank Brian, Collin and Leslie for their patience and support. If God wills, I should start some serious hacking very soon.

Key Tasks that stalled last Week

• 1. Installation of perl interface for executing the Benchmarking suite
     1. Have some issues with the DBD::mysql module on cygwin …

One of the cardinal rules of writing web applications is to escape user-generated input with functions like PHP’s real_escape_string. This is a great rule, but one that can have a negative impact on your application’s performance if used unnecessarily. For instance, when querying data with an integer parameter that is passed internally (not [...]

Whitehurst is focused on growing Red Hat's top line; will open source purists cheer him on? READ MORE

I keep seeing this posts by some of the manager types on planet MySQL about how they or some other guy is worrying about open source vendors not raking in billions or are not stealing billions of money out of peoples pockets that should not be playing on the stock market and things along those lines. While I do agree that its great to see open source software flourish .. actually let me clear that up, why do I even care if open source software flourishes? I care because I think open source software enables a different kind of growth for society, one that is shared, one that lowers barriers, one that I feel is more in tune with a world at peace.

Of course I want people that take part in this to be able to provide themselves and their families a decent life. But the fact of the matter is, these people do not need …

The blog is now powered by a custom Django application instead of Wordpress.

Most of the URI's stay the same, only the feed address has changed. Be sure to update your feed reader if you want to read more about, well... stuff I do.

Comments now use django-threadedcomments, which enables the possibility of replying to specific comments and displaying them in a tree-like manner.

While migrating the entries and comments from Wordpress (Jannis wrote a little script for that, which works great with a few adjustments), I also took the chance to switch the database system from MySQL to PostgreSQL. There's no particular reason why I switched to Postgres, MySQL is still a good …

There are quite a few "tuning primers" and "my.cnf generators" and "sample my.cnf files" online. The ultimate tool for generating an optimal my.cnf is not a tool. It's a human with many years of experience, deep knowledge of MySQL and the full application stack, and familiarity with your application and your data.

I don't know exactly the percentage, but quite a few of the servers I take a look at have been "optimized" with some tuning primer or question-and-answer script that spits out "optimal" parameters for my.cnf.

Most of the time these servers are far from optimal. Sometimes the my.cnf parameters are extremely wrong, to the point of causing a severe performance penalty.

If it were as easy as writing a tool to do this, don't you think Maatkit would have mk-optimal-mycnf already? In my opinion -- as someone who knows very well the complexity of creating a good my.cnf -- it's practically impossible. Much harder than …