I am of the attitude, the day you stop learning something is the day you die. I’m not prepared to induce MySQL into both sides of that equation, however some days it never ceases to amaze me what little thing I didn’t know about MySQL.

Today I saw in reviewing SQL statements for an application SELECT LAST_INSERT_ID(). No big deal, that is expected, however I then saw UPDATE … SET id=LAST_INSERT_ID(id+1) WHERE …

Having never seen this syntax I was forced to review it’s usage. See MySQL Documentation

If expr is given as an argument to LAST_INSERT_ID(), the value of the argument is returned by the function and is remembered as the next value to be returned by LAST_INSERT_ID(). This can be used to simulate sequences:

1.Create a table to hold the sequence counter and …

VMWare open sources Tools product. Sun adds virtualization features and PostgreSQL to Solaris 10. MySQL releases MySQL Enterprise update. (and more)

VMware Unveils VMware Tools as Open Source Software, VMWare (Press Release)

Sun’s Solaris 10 Advances Virtualization and Network Performance, Incorporates Open Source PostgreSQL Database, Sun Microsystems (Press Release)

MySQL Enterprise Simplifies Database Scale-Out with New Automated Replication Monitoring & Advisory Tools, MySQL AB (Press Release)

Embedded Systems Developers Demand Access to RTOS Source …

Kris writes:

I had a machine with 4 nics that I wanted to bond 2 by to. I had no problem getting the bond0 device up witn any of the interfaces, however getting a bond1 up always resulted in the above error.

The friendly guys from #centos on freenode pointed me to the missing config.

options bonding mode=4 max_bonds=4

An important thing to keep in mind here is that in the RHEL/CentOS initscripts package, these options are global. There is no way to set a different set of options for each bond. So, if for instance, you had 4 NICs and wanted to have 2 of them bonded in mode 1 and 2 of them in mode 4, you’re SOL. (Unless, of course, you go for insmodding everything by hand. But that’s ugly)

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Better late then never, this week I finally have the chance to catch up on some overdue posts. At the first MySQL Camp I made a list of memorable Quotes, see Day 1, Day 2, Day 3. I didn’t get as much chance as last time, however here are some pearls of the recent MySQL Camp II.

“I walked in of the street for the free food. I’m here for the free education” - Adrian.

“I’m his boss, I’m here to make sure he’s really here, and not playing hooky.”

“Mashups, collating the worse bugs from multiple API’s all in one place” - OSCON badge

“Compiles 114,000 combinations of MySQL that we are interested in.” Sandro - Skoll Project — You mean to say there are …

In 2002, a short while after I started at MySQL, I saw Lawrence Lessig present at OSCON. The presentation was extraordinarily good and Lessig is a tremendously passionate, genuine and compelling orator.

I immediately revised my presentation style. I stole what ideas and style I could. While I was mostly presenting about MySQL and PHP at the time, the ideas served me well (though the style has at times fit me about as well as a young child fits their parent’s clothes.)

Five years have passed since then, and I have given a hundred or more presentations. Never have I presented as well as Lessig that night, but I still keep trying. In a few days, I am going to have to try a lot harder.
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Time vs (Money/Skill).

I go into the average IT startup that has been around for a few years
and I can mention our, meaning MySQL's, monitoring system and I hear
"We already built that. We have a couple of guys and all they do..."

Compare this to walking into a bank like I did this week. They loved
it. Typical Oracle shop migrating off Oracle and moving all new
systems to MySQL.

The difference?

The bank guys are focused on what they do, while the IT shop is
focused on build out. The IT guys feel that they are Jedi.

Hire Jedi. Hire the guy who needs to know how everything works. Hire
the guy who knows he needs to build his own lightsaber.

Avoid? The guy who thinks he also needs to build his own starship,
droids, sew his own cloak, and is into replacement body part surgery.

One of the most …

59 - that is the number of statistics collected by mysqlnd. When I started writing this blog post, I hoped it would be easy going describing them. But it wasn’t. Some ten days ago, we’ve had 51 statistics and near zero tests for them. Now we have 59 statistics. And, in a certain way, every figure is a tuning screw in the hand of one who knows what they do.

I must confess, I grossly underestimated the time it takes to write only a few words about some of them. Here is a first batch of comments on some 20 figures. Already those some 20 figures should give you an idea how the mysqlnd statistics might help you with bottleneck analysis, monitoring. Or you use the statistics to identify scripts that select more rows than they consume, open more connections than needed, …

How to access client statistics with mysqlnd

Statistics are only available with mysqlnd. Statistics can be accessed using:

• Per process: …

Dear Future self,

The next time you run into PHP Fatal error: Call to undefined method DB_Error::query() and you are pretty sure all the correct libraries are installed , check if you can connect to the database with the username / password you have configured. Just as today you might have migrated to a new mysql server and forgotten to update the connection string.

thank you for your attention.

You know, normally I use this blog for posting thoughts primarily focused on technical aspects of DRBD, Linux, HA solutions, or (normally) a combination of all three. This one is an exception.

These past couple of days I had the pleasure of doing a DRBD/Linux-HA training with 6 Sales and Professional Services MySQLers. And like just about anyone I’ve met from MySQL up to this point, without exception each and every one of them was smart, professional, open-minded, and generally fun to be around. I greatly enjoyed my past two work days. If you reading this post happen to be one of those 6 guys, thank you very much.

And the nice part about the company I work for is that highly productive and fun days at work like these are the norm, rather than the exception.

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