As you might know while running GROUP BY and some other kinds of queries MySQL needs to create temporary tables, which can be created in memory, using MEMORY storage engine or can be created on disk as MYISAM tables. Which one will be used depends on the allowed tmp_table_size and also by the data which needs to be put to temporary tables - BLOB/TEXT columns are not supported with MEMORY storage engine so must use on disk MyISAM temporary table.

What i decided to do is to see how much overhead do on disk temporary tables cause compared to MEMORY tables. To have things comparable I used medium size table and types which can be presented both in MEMORY and MyISAM storage engine.

The benchmarks are done with MySQL 5.0.45 on 32bit Fedora Core 6 on Pentium 4 box - something I had available for testing.

PLAIN TEXT SQL:

1. CREATE TABLE `gt` (
2.   `i` int(10) UNSIGNED NOT …

One of the mysql database servers I manage started to have issues with doing backups yesterday. mysqldump was running but nothing was happening on the backup side. I started to investigate to see why our full backups were failing. I opened up the mysql error log file (mine is at: /usr/local/mysql/var/hostname.err) [...] …

I noticed today if you go to Yahoo.com and type MySQL to Search field it gives you suggestions for MySQL, which are:

* loading javascript arrays with mysql data
* mysql performance blog
* mysql download
* mysql administrator download
* mysql front download

It may not be best search suggestions but it is cool to see our blog name to make it in the top of the list.
Too bad few Geeks use Yahoo for search so most of our search engine traffic comes from Google.

MySQLCamp is a free event available to the public, though geared towards the MySQL Community. There is no fee for any participant, and workshops are presented by participants and chosen by the community.

Last year, Google was kind enough to sponsor all of the logistics, from food to meeting space. This year, Polytechnic University is providing the location — and we're opening up sponsorship for the rest!

Technocation, Inc. — a US not-for-profit providing educational resources for IT professionals –  is sponsoring a donor campaign for MySQLCamp II, to take place from August 23-24, 2007 at Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, NY, USA.

By sponsoring MySQL Camp, you will not only help out the community and get a tax deduction, but your name and company's name will …

From Slashdot:
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/13/1939231&from=rss

Its not that surprising to me that I am not the only person who wants a copy of Wikipedia in my pocket. The amount of time I am reading wikipedia has been going up each year. Its becoming a rare work day where I do not use it for reference at least once. The technical articles are getting better and better and its better then IMDB most of the time for information on a Movie.

Other things that are impressing me:

Foleo http://www.palm.com/us/products/mobilecompanion/foleo/index.html?creativeID=SP_M_foleo
I missed the point of this device when I first saw it. I thought "oh, bigger Treo, …

MySQLCamp is a free event available to the public, though geared towards the MySQL Community.  There is no fee for any participant, and workshops are presented by participants and chosen by the community. Last year, Google was kind enough to sponsor all of the logistics, from food to meeting space.  This year, Polytechnic University is providing the location -- and we're opening up sponsorship for the rest!

 Technocation, Inc. -- a US not-for-profit providing educational resources for IT professionals --  is sponsoring a donor campaign for MySQLCamp II, to take place from August 23-24, 2007 at Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, NY, USA.  More »

It's hard to take the question seriously, given that Google, Travelocity, etc. care deeply about their businesses, and entrust them to open-source databases. And yet the question still comes up, as it did at eWeek recently.

eWeek asked Kevin Closson, chief software architect for PolyServe-HP, who answered 'Yes,' open-source databases (like MySQL and Postgres) are serious alternatives to Oracle et al, but that it depends on the application:

...

I just got off the phone with Andres from Polytechnic and got the pricing for catering at the unviersity. It's actually quite reasonably priced, and I'm looking for sponsors to go in on food costs. Sheeri has set up a location that sponsors can donate money for the food in a tax-deductible manner through Technocation, the non-profit organization Sheeri established. Here's a breakdown of food costs:

• Coffee and Tea: $1.50/person - at ~150 people, that's $225
• Continental Breakfast: $3.50/person - at ~150 people, that's $525
• Lunch (a lot of food, apparently): $10.50/person - at ~150, that's $1575
• Dinner: $20.00/person - at ~150 people, that's $3000

I was initially planning on not worrying too much about catering the event, as there …

A lot of things have already been said about the Real Application Testing Option — from the price to the most interesting technical details — by Ken Jacobs, Arup Nanda, and even by me. Why add something? Because while Database Replay gets most people’s attention, Real Application Testing offers another interesting feature called SQL [...]

Pentaho Data Integration (aka Kettle) can be used for ETL but it can also be used in EII scenarios. For instance, you have a report that can be run from a customer service application that will allow the customer service agent to see the current issues/calls up to the minute (CRM database) but also give a strategic snapshot of the customer from the customer profitability and value data mart (data warehouse). You’d like to look a this on the same report that with data coming from two different systems with different Operating Systems and databases.

Kettle can make short work of this using the integration Pentaho provides and the ability to SLURP data from an ETL transform into a report without the need to persist to some temporary or staging table. The thing that Pentaho has NOT made short work of, is being able to use the visual report authoring tools (Report Designer and Report Design Wizard) to be able to use a Kettle transform as a …