Point-in-time recovery or PITR is one of my favorite PostgreSQL features. Most database servers have a transaction log for recovery. (MySQL is one of the few exceptions; more on that shortly.) However, PostgreSQL PITR allows and even encourages users to manipulate the logs to perform some very useful tasks:

* Creating a bit-for-bit backup of a server without halting
* Restoring a server to a specific point in time
* Creating a warm standby server

The third task is especially interesting because it's so common. One of the most pronounced trends in computing is the decreasing cost of computing power through Moore's law improvements and virtualization. Standby solutions nowadays look like a good investment compared to the cost having a server down or worse …

Hello and welcome to my Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs. My name is Keith Murphy and I am the editor of MySQL Magazine, a free digital magazine with information for MySQL administrators and developers, released quarterly.  I am also a MySQL database administrator at Pythian.

I am losing count of how many of these Log Buffers I have done. If I recall correctly, this is number three. But then again, it could be number four. You know what they say though—the more the merrier!

This week’s Buffer features a great allegory about a database, some tips, feature requests, and breaking news. It seems that this week, people shared information that was relevant across database servers, so I recommend that no …

Thanks to Bernardo Damele, the lib_mysqludf_sys package hosted by the Repository for MySQL UDFs can now boast a new sys_eval() function. You can read the details here on his blog. Bernardo also created a similar function for PostgreSQL.

Thank you, Bernardo!!!

sys_eval() is quite like …

The 132nd edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs, has been published by Lisa Dobson on the Oracle Newbies Blog.

Log Buffer is a the-more-the-merrier kind of thing, so please leave a comment on Lisa’s LB with your favourite database blogs from this week. Or, get in touch with me and get started on publishing an edition on your own blog. Fun. Readers. Glory. These can be yours with when you do Log Buffer.

And now, on with Lisa’s Log Buffer #132.

As Hubert writes, PostgreSQL 8.4 has windowing functions.

Well done. I’ve been watching progress on this for a while. It greatly enhances the expressiveness of SQL.

What about common table expressions (WITH and WITH RECURSIVE)? Yes, PostgreSQL 8.4 will have common table expressions (WITH and WITH RECURSIVE) as well. That’s the “other” quantum [...]

Over the past few weeks (years really) there has been some discussion on sharding. Instead of discussing when sharding is required, as there are good discussions on this already, I want to discuss how I would like to have sharding implemented in the database.

I want the database to handle sharding automatically, and where it can't be automatic, I want the database to help as much as it can.  Just like I want my business logic in a language ideally suited to it, and not stored procs (generally, there are always exceptions); I want all my physical persistence to be handled by the place that already does most of it, the database.  Having the database handle some of the physical persistence and the object relational layer handle the sharding logic isn’t ideal to me, and not just because the current object relational layers don’t have all the sharding functionality I want.  So here is what I want my database to do.   …

Welcome to the 131st edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs.

Fundamentals are always a good place to start, so let’s do that courtesy Craig Mullins of Data Management Today. Craig’s fundamental question is, what does a DBA do? A good one for blank-faced relatives and dinner-party companions.

Perhaps you’re just a little blank-faced too, a least on the subject of DB2 LUW? If so, Susan Visser of Build your Skill on DB2 shows the way forward with a compilation of …

Mark Wong’s entry titled “Following up a couple questions from the presentation at PSU on January 8, 2009” just caught my eye:

What is ‘iopp’?

It’s a custom tool to go through the Linux process table to get i/o statistics per process. It is open source and can be downloaded from:

http://git.postgresql.org/?p=~markwkm/iopp.git;a=summary

If you know me, you know I [...]

Welcome to the 130th edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs.

Oracle Blogs

Tanel Poder began a new series on Oracle memory troubleshooting with an introduction to his heapdump analyzer script.

Richard Foote asked, is it possible to shrink a newly created index? His answer? Just.

On the Oracle DBA and Apps DBA blog, Sabdar Syed also has a …

Welcome, readers, to the 129th edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs. Welcome also to 2009, so fresh it still has that wonderful new year smell. Let’s take ‘er out on the road and see what she can do.

Starting with Oracle (and reaching back here a little into the holidays), Doug Burns had performance on his mind—to be precise, his own at UKOUG; and some performance-related blogs he’s found worthwhile. Doug’s recommendations themselves always perform well.

Tanel Poder was on the same road. In his item, …