Update: MySQL 4 and 5 behave differently.
In MySQL5 there is a steady activity on some handlers, probably caused by the status queries themselves. This does not happen in 4.1. I have issued a support call with MySQL and will see what to do about it.

Update 2: See the follow-up post for more information on how to work around this.

MySQL Administrator is one of the graphical tools MySQL provide to manage their database servers. Apart from other things like server daemon control and a log file viewer this tool includes visual controls to display the load of the database server.

Even though the out-of-the-box configuration already contains some useful diagrams, I added some …

As I wrote earlier in Using the MySQL Test Suite I found an issue with using the current MySQL Sakila Sample Database as a test with mysqltest.

I was running an older version of 5.1.7 beta so I figured the best course of action was to upgrade to 5.1.11 beta.

Well the problem still exists, and I found that the cause was due to the syntax of the DELIMITER command. Assuming the creation of the schema tables, here is an example of what I found.

Running in an interactive mysql session the following works

DROP TRIGGER ins_film;
DELIMITER ;;
CREATE TRIGGER `ins_film` AFTER INSERT ON `film` FOR EACH ROW BEGIN
    INSERT INTO film_text (film_id, title, description)
        VALUES (new.film_id, new.title, new.description);
  END;;
DELIMITER ;

On a side note, why does DROP TRIGGER not …

Paul has released Version 0.95 of his PBXT MySQL Transactional Storage Engine.

Here is what I did to get it operational under CentOS 4.3.

su -
useradd pbxt
su - pbxt
wget http://www.primebase.com/xt/download/mysql-4.1.16-pbxt-0.9.5.tar.gz
tar xvfz mysql-4.1.16-pbxt-0.9.5.tar.gz
cd mysql-4.1.16-pbxt-0.9.5
./configure --with-debug=full --with-pbxt-storage-engine --without-query-cache --with-mysqld-user=pbxt  --prefix=/home/pbxt/mysql
make
make install
scripts/mysql_install_db
cd /home/pbxt/mysql
./bin/mysqld_safe --user=pbxt --basedir=/home/pbxt/mysql &

Now, lets test and confirm PBXT is operational.

bin/mysql -uroot mysql
Reading table information for completion of table and column names
You can turn off this …

As Sun continues to debate just how they will open-source Java and deal with things like forking and perceived loss of control they would be well served to take a look at how successful open source projects are managed and developed. In the majority of cases there is a company or organization that acts as the Shepard of the project and manages the development roadmap. Case in point: the MySQL database is managed by MySQL AB, Apache is managed by the ASF, and Spring is guided by Interface 21. There are exceptions where the community takes over either and self-governs (like PHP) or creates fissures that result into multiple iterations of the base code (like Linux) which likely …

I've written a lot recently about MySQL index and table structure, primary keys, surrogate keys, and related optimizations. In this article I'll explain how MySQL's index structures enable an extremely important query optimization, and how that differs between storage engines. I'll also show you how to know and predict when the optimization is triggered, how to design tables and queries so it'll be used, and how to avoid defeating it with poor practices. Plus, I'll peek a bit into InnoDB internals to show you what's going on behind the scenes.

MySQL provides two different tools to test the MySQL Server with SQL statements. One is mysqltest and in 5.1 mysqlslap. Both of these tools have quite different purposes. This is a quick review of the usage of mysqltest.

Current Usage

Under Linux deploys, the README in the mysql-test directory gives you all the information you need to know to run.

To run the full test suite.

cd /opt/mysql/mysql-test
 ./mysql-test-run

Rather easy, it does take some time, and I was surprised to find a number of tests marked as ’skipped’. The general purpose of having tests in a product is to provide coverage of software functionality, and tests should always be forward …

Our company, RightMedia is in the process of evaluating a storage subsystem for our ever growing MySQL databases. It seems that our data is growing at an alarming rate (this is a good thing) and our internal SCSI disks aren't handling the load of massive inserts, plus large queries. So the time is now to evaluate a storage subsystem that will grow with us and scale for our performance needs.

I was really reluctant when I first heard iSCSI proposed as a potential solution. I am familiar with large storage subsystems all hooked in through fibre channel. It's an expensive solution, but performance is great. There are a few iSCSI vendors, and we had lots of problems with kernel version & driver version. But, we perservered, and have systems where we can benchmark the performance of iSCSI.

Now before I get to the actual numbers, let me give you the environment for the …

Interview with Mark Spencer:
http://www.asteriskvoipnews.com/asterisk_news/new_mark_spencer_interview_creator_of_asterisk.html

Mark Spencer is the author of Asterisk, the open source PBX system,
and is the primary owner of the company Digium which commercializes
it. Asterisk has the real potential to have a long term ability to
commoditize much of the telecom industry. Used Skype Out? Then your
call was probably routed via Asterisk by one of Skype's partners.

If you are an employee at MySQL then you have used Asterisk since it is our PBX system.

Catch the last question to Mark and his answer:
Question: Why are you planing to release a new stable version every 6
month? Many people have the feeling that a PBX software should …

The new release of PBXT is, in fact, smaller than the previous version. This is due to a major re-structuring of the code. The result is a more compact and direct implementation. With less code to execute and some major changes this version is also a lot faster.

The most significant change is that all files (except the transaction logs) are now associated with a particular table. All table related files begin with the name of the table, and can be easily identified. If a database is not being accessed you can copy a table by copying the associated files, or drop a table by deleting the files. However, the main reason for this change was to improve the speed of sequentially reading and writing.

Records are now divided into a fixed and a variable length component. The fixed length component is stored together with the handle in the record data file. The variable …

As the open source community is gripped in "futbol fever" a huge thank you is owed to Yahoo for hosting the official FIFA World Cup web site.  The site's performance is excellent as it deftly handles huge traffic surges from fanatical fans clicking madly to see results in real time.  As with many Yahoo sites, this one is powered by MySQL.  We're proud to be playing our part here in delivering up-to-date information to fans around the world. 

Today's semi-final match is Germany vs Italy being played in Dortmund. In past World Cup encounters, Italy has always come out ahead, but this time the German team may have momentum --and a home crowd advantage --on their side.  The game is at 3:00 pm US Central Time, 21:00 CET.