I’ve just released three updates to tools in MySQL Toolkit. The updated programs are MySQL Query Profiler (major new features and helper script), MySQL Table Sync (bug fixes, documentation, features), and MySQL Table Checksum (minor sanity check enhancement). MySQL Query Profiler 1.1.0 I’ve added the ability to profile more data, including an educated guess at the number of filesorts. The tool can now profile external programs. There are several ways you can do this:

When I wrote my first article on algorithms to compare and synchronize data between MySQL tables, Webyog’s Rohit Nadhani left a comment on the article mentioning the SQLyog Job Agent, which has a similar function. Although I have been developing MySQL Table Sync essentially in isolation, I have been meaning to give SQLyog Job Agent a try. I recently did so, and then followed that up with an email conversation with Rohit.

Paul Tuckfield from YouTube is leading a session at the upcoming MySQL Conference & Expo April 23-26 on how they scale MySQL to deal with millions of videos from the world's most popular video web site.  YouTube has experienced the kind of exponential growth that every startup dreams of and Paul's practical tips and guidance will give you the benefit of their hard work and close collaboration with MySQL.

There are also other great practical sessions by top MySQL customers including Google, Nokia, FlickR, …

I leaned a new trick today with LOAD DATA INFILE. I’m migrating some data from an external source, and the Date Format is not the MySQL required YYYY-MM-DD, it was DD-MMM-YY. So how do you load this into a Date Field.


$ echo "02-FEB-07" > /tmp/t1.psv
$ mysql -umysql
USE test;
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS t1;
CREATE TABLE t1(d1 DATE);
# echo "02-FEB-07" > /tmp/t1.psv
LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE '/tmp/t1.psv'
INTO TABLE t1 (@var1)
SET d1=STR_TO_DATE(@var1,'%d-%M-%y');
SELECT * FROM t1;
EXIT


The trick is to bind the appropriate column within the file being loaded to a variable, @var1 in my example and use the SET syntax to perform a function on the variable. Rather cool.

A good tip to know.

Those that know me, know that I‘m a little paranoid about backup automation around the house (because I‘m lazy, and that if it wasn‘t automated, it wouldn‘t get done).

I‘m also a little paranoid about offsite backups, so therefore I have a VPN between my house and my parents‘ house, and send my nightly backups (via rsync) to their place as well.

Normally, when I check my e-mail in the morning, I see a little report about what got backed up. I didn‘t notice that it was missing this morning, and instead it arrived at 3:00 in the afternoon.

That seemed a little odd, so I went and looked at my cricket instance, and low-and-behold, the outbound rsync had the 768Kbps side of my DSL connection pegged since 02:00 AM. A little “du”ing around on my backup server, and I found out that a backup had taken place in the middle of a torrent of FC6. That wouldn‘t have been a problem, except that BT stores …

Those that know me, know that I'm a little paranoid about backup automation around the house (because I'm lazy, and that if it wasn't automated, it wouldn't get done).

I'm also a little paranoid about offsite backups, so therefore I have a VPN between my house and my parents' house, and send my nightly backups (via rsync) to their place as well.

Normally, when I check my e-mail in the morning, I see a little report about what got backed up. I didn't notice that it was missing this morning, and instead it arrived at 3:00 in the afternoon.

That seemed a little odd, so I went and looked at my cricket instance, and low-and-behold, the outbound rsync had the 768Kbps side of my DSL connection pegged since 02:00 AM. A little "du"ing around on my backup server, and I found out that a backup had taken place in the middle of a torrent of FC6. That wouldn't have been a problem, except that BT stores incomplete files in your …

Those that know me, know that I‘m a little paranoid about backup automation around the house (because I‘m lazy, and that if it wasn‘t automated, it wouldn‘t get done).

I‘m also a little paranoid about offsite backups, so therefore I have a VPN between my house and my parents‘ house, and send my nightly backups (via rsync) to their place as well.

Normally, when I check my e-mail in the morning, I see a little report about what got backed up. I didn‘t notice that it was missing this morning, and instead it arrived at 3:00 in the afternoon.

That seemed a little odd, so I went and looked at my cricket instance, and low-and-behold, the outbound rsync had the 768Kbps side of my DSL connection pegged since 02:00 AM. A little “du”ing around on my backup server, and I found out that a backup had taken place in the middle of a torrent of FC6. That wouldn‘t have been a problem, except that BT stores …

So far, this year, past and planned (as in currently reserved) travel means I will spend the equivalent of at least 21 work days inside aircraft - just for MySQL related travel.

eep.

Mark Radcliffe joins us this week to give his expert opinion on the latest draft of GPLv3. Mark is a friend and one of the industry's premier IP attorneys, especially with open source licensing questions. He is outside counsel for the OSI and chairs Committee C in the GPLv3 drafting process.

In other words, he knows his stuff.

Dave and I invited Mark to contribute to Open Sources on GPLv3. Here's his response:

The most recent draft of the GPLv3 was released on Wednesday, March 28. This guest blog will summarize the legal issues in the draft and some of the open issues. I have been involved in the process since the beginning because I am the chair of Committee C, the Users Committee, and I serve as outside general counsel on a pro bono basis for the Open Source Initiative. These comments are mine alone and do not represent the views of any of my clients.

The draft is part of a year long process of …

One very interesting thing I noticed with MySQL was that if you delete a database, ibdata file doesn’t shrink by that much space to minimize disk usage. I deleted the database and checked usage of /usr/local/mysql/var folder and noticed that ibdata file is still the same size. So the problem I face now [...]