Maybe there's still some fight in the PostgreSQL competition, after all. [Update: Or maybe it has more to do with internal changes at MySQL - see below.] According to data compiled by MarkMail, PostgreSQL messaging traffic dwarfs that of MySQL's, suggesting that the Postgres community is more active than MySQL's:

Comparing PostgreSQL and MySQL is kind of interesting. With all the talk about the LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP-Perl-Python) architecture you'd think MySQL had a lock on the open source database market, but based on simple message traffic analytics, PostgreSQL has a much higher level of community involvement. Looking at January 2000 onward, the MySQL lists have amassed 340,000 messages with about 3,000 new messages each month. In the same time period, the PostgreSQL lists have hit 583,000 messages with 7,000 new each …

As already reported the deal is done (see Sun Press Release, Kaj - Ambassador to Sun comments). I’ve had a look at the Official Sun-MySQL website.

Here is a review of the interesting words and images on the new site.

• Overview - Ultimate Scalability for the Web Economy (dolphin & sunset)
• Features - It Just works (windsurfer with island view)
• Tech Specs - Celebrate the Possibilities (skydiver on snowboard)
• Perspectives - Open, Fast, and Free Just Got Better (snowboarders viewing the mountain scape)
• Support - Unbeatable Duo - Open Source and Global Support (couple showing the V symbol)
• Training - Get Trained. …

I just need to get some basics off of my chest here, it’s by no means a full list but it’s the most basic list I can think of to start with, and it’s basic because I am surprised by some of the slop I’ve seen in production environments.

1. Highly available server clusters - this is different than load balancing cluster, if confused see here.

2. Disaster recovery

-> this means daily,weekly,monthly backups as well as off site backups, and tertiary backups as well as a plan to get those backups imported and running in production as fast as possible. Backups should have consistency checking when they are created.

3. Security

-> perimeter on the network, VLAN’d databases from the web/app servers, firewall, ACLs, etc

-> system level: strong passwords on OS and database accounts (no blank …

I hope I’ll have the opportunity to meet you in person soon.

A face to face meeting may indeed be possible, if our World Tour celebrating the acquisition of MySQL by Sun has a stop close to you, and if I happen to be lucky to be attending that particular meetup just announced:

To toast the success of the acquisition and engage with customers, employees, community developers and partners, Sun and MySQL executives will kick-off a global tour in March, hitting major cities worldwide leading up to the popular MySQL Conference & Expo in April. Every Sun-MySQL community can participate online, …

Sun formally completed its acquisition of MySQL on Tuesday. I was fortunate to spend 15 minutes on the phone with Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun, after the press conference.

I asked him a range of questions about criticism of Sun over Linux, as well as whether the MySQL integration would be as prickly as Red Hat's acquisition of JBoss was at times.

As usual, Schwartz didn't disappoint.

The Linux Foundation's Amanda McPherson recently called you out over Sun's continued push for Solaris despite Linux's rise. Why aren't you giving up?

...

We've now officially closed MySQL's acquisition by Sun this morning and I thought I'd make a few observations about the process. I've been through several acquisitions over the years, both on the acquiring and the acquired side, and so far, this one has gone the smoothest. While Sun is obviously a much larger company than MySQL, the approach that the Sun execs and managers have taken has been professional and respectful every step of the way. Not once have I heard Sun employees say "This is the way we do things here." Instead, there has been a strong desire to... READ MORE

Today, Sun announced we've closed the acquisition of MySQL - MySQL is now officially a part of Sun! From a dinner meeting back in late November, through some introspection from MySQL's CEO, to a closing today in late February - everyone involved showed a great sense of pace, urgency and excitement. And now, it's off to the races!

Since the announcement, I've seen and heard near universal support for the relationship - most everyone wants to know where we're headed, so here's a quick overview of our initial plans.

Starting today, we're rolling out global programs to raise awareness and adoption of MySQL among more established enterprises - you'll see ads like this (to the right) targeting institutions and independent software/service vendors (ISV's) looking to …

Now we have The Real Thing: MySQL joins Sun Microsystems!

On 16 January 2008, less than six weeks ago, Sun announced their definitive agreement to acquire MySQL AB. That “definite agreement” was still subject to government approval in the US, Germany and Austria, and to the signing of the legal transfer documents by MySQL AB’s current owners.

Those hurdles have now been passed, and the acquisition is thus official. MySQL is part of Sun!

Many community members and customers have surely thought of Sun’s acquisition as a Done Deal already. Perhaps there never was any real uncertainty about it, but at least theoretically, there still was a risk of the deal not closing. That uncertainty is now removed.

This is very exciting for us at MySQL.

The last six weeks, we’ve been living under special circumstances: We’ve known that Sun is acquiring us. We’ve seen and experienced that …

Maximizing Sysbench OLTP performance for MySQL

Sysbench is a popular open source benchmark used to measure performance of various parts of the operating systems and (one) application (database). Since we are talking about MySQL, I will concentrate on the database part of the test.

The oltp test in the sysbench benchmark creates a single table and runs a set of queries against it. Each row in the table is around 250 bytes and by default it creates 1000 rows. For our experiment we used 10 million rows. Allan has blogged about the details regarding the experiments; I will present an alternate view to those experiments.

The trick to getting good numbers with Sysbench and MySQL is very simple

1. Maximize CPU utilization
2. Reduce delays due to IO
…