In my previous post I mentioned you might need to increase net_write_timeout to avoid connection being aborted and now I think I should have better explained that.

MySQL uses a lot of different timeout variables at different stages. For example when connection is just being established connect_timeout is used. When server waits for another query to be sent to it wait_timeout
(or interactive_timeout for applications which specified they are interactive during connection). This value is rather large as it is rather typical for some applications to have long delays between queries.

If query is being read or result set is being sent back, much shorter net_read_timeout and net_write_timeout are used.

…

After having a week to recover from the first exam I finally got around to taking the second one….and passed!!

Part II of the MySQL DBA Certification focused a lot more on the day to day running of the server, compared to Part I which was very much installation / configuration based.

Studying for the exam was a little difficult as I also had to work this week (as opposed to being on holiday!), but the skills you gain can be directly applied to everyday management of MySQL, and can be very rewarding especially if you focus on optimisation.

So what next you ask? Well after getting this far I thought it only fair that I give something back to the MySQL Community in the form of a MoinMoin Macro - …

Using the LAMP Virtual Appliance, it is possible to create a full Django development environment in less than 15 minutes.

This article assumes that the reader is already familiar with VMware virtualization products and has one of the following products installed and functional on their host operating system: VMware Player (free download), VMware Server (free download), or VMware Workstation.

Download the LAMP VA (build 131 or newer) and configure for your environment.

Assuming a …

Would appreciate your comments and love to work on MySQL related problems if you are facing any, that will also keep me motivated about posting stuff here.

My current project is MyEye, which will be soon available. It is a tool that will keep a vigilant eye on your MySQL installation, provide valuable feedback and helps in monitoring too.

I was reading the latest issue of Mac|Life tonight (I liked it better as Mac Addict, by the way), and it struck me how dependent Apple is on Microsoft. For all the cool things that come with Mac hardware and OS X, a large swath of the Mac user population would be crippled or wiped out if Microsoft decided to stop supporting Office for Mac.

The Mac faithful (of which I am part) won't like to hear this, but it's true. OpenOffice is an excellent program (It actually is now--three years ago it was rubbish), but many of us simply couldn't use it "in production." Sure, I could run Office for Windows in Parallels' coherence mode (and almost certainly would), but that's an unnecessarily roundabout way of solving something best done directly.

This is a …

I am planning (and possibly Eric as well) on going to the MySQL Developer’s Meeting in Heidelberg, Germany during the week of September 17th. If you’re in Europe somewhere (in Germany, even better) and are interested in on-site consulting from Proven Scaling in mid September, let me know!

I may also be attending the MySQL Users Conference in Tokyo September 11-12, so if you’re in Japan (or near) and want MySQL consulting on-site in early or mid-September, also do let me know!

Our exprience in solving query optimizer problems shows that a good chunk of optimization problems are incorrect choice of join order. The most frequent causes of the problems are

1. Table engine returns index statistics or records-in-range numbers that are very far from reality;
2. The WHERE clause has high-selectivity conditions for one table and low-selectivity conditions for the other. The optimizer is not aware of this and chooses a poor join order;
3. Bugs or shortcomings in the optimizer or the table engine;

At the moment investigation of those kinds of problems is hard and time-consuming:

• There is no easy way to find out what the storage engine has returned to the optimizer from records-in-range calls. One has to manually repeat the steps taken by equality propagation, constant table detection and other query rewrites, construct the table's condition and run the …

MySQL developes a new driver for PHP, called php-mysqlnd.
This driver is a replacement for libmysql, but offers some new features too.

The result-object now has the method "fetch_all", which (as the name says) returns an array containing all result set rows. This method is much faster than calling fetch_assoc in a loop.
Unfortunately it´s not possible to specify a column that should be used for the array index.
Would be great if something like this is possible:

$res        =       $mysqli->query("SELECT customer_id, last_name FROM customers");
$data       =       $res->fetch_all("customer_id");
print_r($data);

Array
(
    [123] => Array
        (
            [customer_id] => 123
            [last_name] => foo
        )

    [124] => Array
        (
            [customer_id] => 124
            [last_name] …

Coming to OSCON at the end of the month?

If so, I’d be happy to see you on Thursday 26 July 2007 5:20pm - 6:05pm in F150, where I will be talking about The MySQL Architecture of Participation.

Quoting from the O’Reilly session page:

While MySQL has been FOSS from the start and GPL since 2000, the development process at MySQL has been fairly concentrated around the company itself. One of the corporate goals for 2007 is to open up our entire development model:

• ensuring that our already-opened tools are open enough (our bugs system at bugs.mysql.com, and our source control system with BitKeeper)
…

I have been excited about the MySQL native drive (mysqlnd) since I first heard about it.  They are looking for testers now.  The sites I could test on are not really that high traffic.  So, not sure I would be much help to them.

I am not sure how I feel about this bit of news in that post:

“While mysqlnd was originally designed for PHP 6, Andrey Hristov has now finished the backport of mysqlnd to PHP 5 and added support for ext/mysql.“

On one hand, it means I can play with it sooner.  But, on the other, it gives slackers another reason not to upgrade to PHP6 and mysqli.  Its a shame.  I really like mysqli.  I would really like to see an end of life for ext/mysql.  But, this just keeps it going.  Even more scary is this line:

“Given that 60 % of the PHP user base is still on PHP 4, …