Looking at the Feedback I got for other Presentations Proposals I thought I indeed should submit general presentation focusing on Web Application performance tuning and explaining how you analyze performance and why do you do it this way, so here it is:

Performance Analysis of MySQL powered Web Applications
In this session we'll go beyond MySQL Performance Optimization and look at full stack performance tuning for Web Applications. It is practical session about Performance Tuning Methodology.

Several years ago I have heard the talks about Oracle Performance Optimization methodology by Cary Millsap and that was a great talk with a lot of techniques and concepts could (and should) be applied for any kind of applications, including Powered by MySQL.
Now we're using similar …

I plan to take a few advance SUN courses to refresh and advance my knowledge. I am particularly interested in checking out the DTrace and Solaris 10 Predictive Self-Healing courses. Has anyone taken them before? Are they any good?

BTW, a very good resource on Solaris 10 is Solaris 10 System Administration Collection.

Today I was working on one small consulting task and our client asked for an upgrade from MySQL 5.0 to 5.1. It was pretty easy and task was successfully finished and reported to the customer… But few hours after my report I’ve got an email from customer with something like “WTF? Where is my 5.1?!”. I was shocked when I saw happily running 5.0 on their server w/o anything related to my 5.1 installation…

After some short investigation I’ve found out, that it was cpanel (dumb software for dumb system administrators) - it noticed, that installed mysql version (5.1) is not the same as it thought it should be (5.0), so without any warnings or notices it removed all 5.1 rpms and installed “brand new” 5.0.

Here I’d like to say GREAT THANKS to mysql team for such a great software which did not screwed up user’s data in such situation. But what idiots in cpanel development team decided, that is it appropriate and …

This is more venting my frustration over installing Postfix on a new (xen)box (old 1U VALinux finally crashed, blablah..).

I have been putting days, if not weeks into trying to figure out how to make Postfix with virtual users work together with Amavis and Spamassassin so it filters out to the Spam maildir of users.
Now, some will say: oh, that's peanuts. You take Courier's Maildrop and off you go.. Maybe I'm stupid with this, maybe, but it took me far less headaches and an hour (+ burger + pint in the bar) to get Dovecot 'deliver' figured out with Sieve.. and it actually works!

What I have now working on my Ubuntu Feisty server is:
* Postfix with virtual users using MySQL 5.1 (duh)
* Amavisd going through new email using Spamassassin (still have to figure out how to add the X-Spam header)
* Using Dovecot's deliver tool instead of this .. #!@$#$.. maildrop thing.. (no offense)
* Sieve …

Well, I haven't actually done a lot (or any) blogs before, but I decided that it might be a good idea to do one for my new project.

So I've had this idea for a website since the middle of 2004. I haven't done anything about it because I'm too damn lazy. But recently an opportunity arose recently that I will have a lot of free time....
..... due partly to the fact that my office will be closed down in 1 month.
But instead of being upset about it, why not just find something to do, I said.

But I digress..

The Project
So I have this idea for an online text-based game. The game will be about the cool world of spies and spy agencies.
You can read more about it here http://www.cometform.com/jonathan/sp.html

Discovering MySQL
The thing that I am very interested as of late is MySQL and stored procedures.
(this doesn't have anything to do with the game …

This is more venting my frustration over installing Postfix on a new (xen)box (old 1U VALinux finally crashed, blablah..).

I have been putting days, if not weeks into trying to figure out how to make Postfix with virtual users work together with Amavis and Spamassassin so it filters out to the Spam maildir of users.
Now, some will say: oh, that's peanuts. You take Courier's Maildrop and off you go.. Maybe I'm stupid with this, maybe, but it took me far less headaches and an hour (+ burger + pint in the bar) to get Dovecot 'deliver' figured out with Sieve.. and it actually works!

What I have now working on my Ubuntu Feisty server is:
* Postfix with virtual users using MySQL 5.1 (duh)
* Amavisd going through new email using Spamassassin (still have to figure out how to add the X-Spam header)
* Using Dovecot's deliver tool instead of this .. #!@$#$.. maildrop thing.. (no offense)
* Sieve …

We're heading into the home stretch for the Call for Papers for the MySQL Conference & Expo 2008. The official deadline is end of day today, October 30 and so far, we have plenty of great submissions. However, there's still an opportunity to get in your presentation. In particular, we're looking for more technical presentations on topics like Scale-out, use of Ruby on Rails, use of .Net, High Availability and case studies that show how you're using MySQL in production applications. It's possible that the call for papers may be extended by a couple of days, but I recommend submitting... READ MORE

This is the Halloween edition of the CAOS Theory blog, so please, if you scare easy, consider reading this another time or place where you feel more comfortable. There are some scary things lurking out there for Linux and open source software. Boo! Patents. Eeeeeek! Microsoft. Yikes! Forking. Nooooooo! Mobs of shareholders protesting the opening of company code. But fear not, freedom and efficiency fans of free and open source software. These things that go bump in the market, none of them, are likely to hurt, hamper, maim, slash or otherwise harm the movement, despite dire predictions from some. Here’s why:

Patents - reform is in the making. Most agree that U.S. court rulings, …

This utility written by Kevin Burton is worth checking into - even though it is a first version and needs to be modded for your purposes (in my case I had to alter the local mysql connection string). However, in any case, this is going to be needed by us DBAs in the future, as we manage and build more and more slave servers.This is what the script does, in Kevin's words:This is a script to

I’ve just put together my abstracts for O’Reilly’s MySQL Conference in April 2008. Some of them might sound familiar…

Learn to watch your database like a fitness diet. Trim down the SQL queries, use the right hardware, and monitor the right metrics to keep it running fast.

There are healthy databases and their are unhealthy ones. We?ll take a look at what you feed your database, and how to keep it fit with just the right diet of hardware, configuration, and SQL query tuning.

1. Introduction - Diet of a Champion Database
2. Disk, Memory, CPU - Body by Intel
3. Applications - Lean & Fit
4. SQL Queries - High Fiber, Low Fat
5. Conclusions