mysql-proxy defaults to round-robin load balancing. There are fancy tricks around to get mysql-proxy to balance connections based on how many idle connections there are in a proxy-based connection pool.

But there is no code that I found that would simply load balance based on “always go to one server, go to another server only when the first server is down.”

Well, I spent way too long figuring this out today, again running into the problem where the manual hasn’t been updated. I have indeed made a Forge snippet of this code, but it does not hurt to post it here.

This was in fact taken from …

Continuing on from my lightning visits with Jan Kneschke and Michael Zinner, today I got to spend a day with Paul McCullagh at his home in Hamburg Germany.

Paul is the architect of the PBXT Pluggable Storage Engine for MySQL 5.1, and also the Blob Streaming Storage Engine. His work was acknowledged with the MySQL Community contributor for the year in 2007. The successful PrimeBase product for the publishing Industry in Europe and North America also now uses PBXT for underlying data storage which is great …

A few days ago, I wrote how I will be your guide to the Grand Tour of the Information Schema and its Applications which is one of the two talks I will be doing at the upcoming MySQL User's Conference.

In view of the popularity of "Pop Quiz" format so successfully used by Carsten, I feel compelled to imitation, and as a primer to my talk, I'd like to offer you my "Me Too" MySQL Information Schema popquiz. So, here goes...


The MySQL information_schema contains a …

Friday, 28/03/2008, is when the Sun-NUS Open Source Day occurs, from noon-6pm. If you’re in Singapore, I can highly recommend you attending. Pre-register now, if you’d like.

Come see me, talk about how you can contribute to MySQL. Especially in a time when students in Singapore will find it useful, to learn, seeing that the Summer of Code applications are in its last lap.

Its at the National University of Singapore. I understand that there might be a DTrace User Group meeting sometime in the evening (i.e. post-6pm). I’ll definitely be at that, or other events if necessary.

I’m reachable at +6-012-204-3201, preferring to get an SMS instead of a call (roaming costs a bit).

See you Friday afternoon!

The agenda (which I can’t seem to find easily online, is pasted here for posterity):
12:00pm …

At 8AM PST I will be doing a MySQL University session on Amazon's Web Services.

There is an IRC channel up on Freenode, #mysql-university for discussion.

Follow my Twitter stream for more details:
http://twitter.com/brianaker

Audio details will be published on IRC and here:
http://forge.mysql.com/wiki/Instructions_for_Attendees

Slides are here:
http://download.tangent.org/talks/AWS.pdf

This is more of an intro talk, so don't expect too much as far as amazing reflections on it :)

Just pondering alphabet soup on the way home...

Linux -> EC2
Mysql/Memcached -> S3/SimpleDB/Queue
Apache/Asterisk -> HTTP/Mechanical Turk
PHP/Perl/Python -> REST

The shift is from a defined technology to mode of operation. I could replace operation with service, but frankly the word is overused at the moment.

The above also focuses the attention on Amazon, when really it is about meeting a need. It just so happens that Amazon at this point has the lead.

Google is skipping the service business and building applications at this point (aka value add).

Why just store data when you could instead turn it into a spreadsheet?

Google Apps is damn sexy for a company just starting out. Once they roll out their Contacts App which eats away SaleForce and then sucker punches QuickBooks they become a one stop shop.

Amazon …

The 451 Group just published a "glass half empty" assessment of the open-source database market. One big takeaway? Open-source databases are widely used, but not yet deeply used.

One of the key findings is that open source software has had a superficial impact on the enterprise database market in that ...

I’ve always been a big proponent of data modeling and using modeling tools to create physical database designs (as an aside, I’ve never been much on logical modeling), so I’m naturally happy about our upcoming MySQL Workbench tool.  During my DBA years, I basically lived in my modeling tools and used them all the time for many different purposes.  I’ve just written a new dev zone article that talks about why modeling is important for creating high-performance databases, and how you can use modeling tools for change management/control purposes and how doing this can keep you from getting burned when DB changes go bad.  Check out the article and let me know what you think.

After seeing some very good "of-the-day" series, I thought why should MySQL variables be left behind. So, my contribution in the race - "variable's day out". I won't brand it "of-the-day" series as it calls for too much of dedication and given my track record I shouldn't promise that. Henceforth, instead of calling a variable lucky enough for a day, lets call a day lucky enough for a variable. Though I will try my best to keep the lucky days rolling.

Today's variable is delay_key_write. Properties:

Since ages, I was busy with many projects including my marriage. Nice to be back on the blog with an update on MyEye - the project I announced in my very first post.

MyEye is an (or is going to be an) open source monitoring tool for MySQL installations with handy knowledge-base and advisories for MySQL DBAs.

So, I'm done with the first round of analysis and design for MyEye. As far as it is planned, it's going to be a framework that would provide interface for people to write their own monitoring rules. Meanwhile MyEye web site is also under construction and I will be publishing the documentation soon there.

Will be looking forward to your contributions for creating an open knowledge base for MyEye.