The MySQL documentation team has released a companion manual to accompany the new single installer for all MySQL GUI tools in the form of a unified manual for all GUI tools, available as a PDF at http://downloads.mysql.com/docs/guibook-en.pdf.

Should be worth keeping on hand if you are a heavy GUI user.

dhh committed a patch for activerecord to make it work with mysql 5 that was subsequently reverted because it broke things on postgres and sqlite.

obviously we?d like ruby on rails to work with mysql 5, but because there was no test case committed along with either of these changes, i don?t really know the root cause of the problem. dhh claims it is the changes that made mysql conform to the standard sql join syntax, but i can?t evaluate that because i can?t reproduce the problem.

any activerecord gurus want to …

Ever wonder what all those binaries with names starting in “ndb” were doing in mysql/bin? Not surprisingly, they’re MySQL Cluster monitoring, utility, and demonstration programs, and after a couple of fun-filled weeks of experimenting with them (and asking a few of the usual sorts of silly questions I’m know for asking in the right quarters) I’ve been able to document most of them in a new Cluster Utility Programs section of the MySQL Manual (I’ve linked to the 5.1 version, but they’re available in 4.1 and 5.0, too).

If you’ve not looked at these before, check them out. A couple of them — like ndb_waiter and ndb_desc — are handy for monitoring a MySQL Cluster or getting information about NDB tables and other Cluster data objects; others — such as …

In our project (the secret merlin project) at MySQL I had to fetch entries from the table which specified by a time-span with a start and a end time:

root@localhost [merlin]> select * from dc_INTEGER; 
+---------+------------+-------+---------------------+---------------------+
| data_id | collect_id | value | begin_time          | end_time            | 
+---------+------------+-------+---------------------+---------------------+
|       1 |          3 |     0 | 2005-10-12 13:28:04 | 2005-10-13 13:43:25 |
|       2 |          1 |    94 | 2005-10-12 15:46:01 | 2005-10-13 10:22:28 |
|       3 |          1 |    95 | 2005-10-13 10:22:28 | 2005-10-13 11:15:59 |
|       4 |          1 |    94 | 2005-10-13 11:15:59 | 2005-10-13 13:43:31 |
+---------+------------+-------+---------------------+---------------------+

The ranges never overlap for the same collect_id.

Now the problem was: How does the query look like if I want to fetch time-span …

OK, so I am going to get this out of the way right now.

Yes, we changed the name of the conference. From "Users Conference" to "Conference and Expo". Why? To draw a larger crowd. Don't read into the removal of the "Users" bit. The focus of the conference is, and will remain, giving the user community what they want: quality technical sessions, tutorials, keynotes, interaction with MySQL developers and others users, and the friendly, personal atmosphere that the MySQL conference is known for.

So, Submit Your Proposals

Yes, it's that time of year again. But, hey, some things are a little different this year. I will be chairing the program committee for next year's conference (Arjen did a fabulous job last year). Secondly, the conference website has been updated. The following are the things I want folks to focus on when …

We have released solidDB for MySQL Beta 3. It is primarily a bug fixing release. We’ve also updated our documentation. If you like having an alternative to the existing standard MySQL …

I got bitten by an implicit type conversion with MySQL recently. This article is about avoiding implicit type conversions, and the weird places you might find them.

Is there anyone using partitioned archive tables in MySQL 5.1 for storing logs (or other voluminous data)?

Storing large amounts of logs in a relational database can bring special challenges.

Logs can take up huge amounts of space on disk, and while disk space is cheap, disk I/O can be expensive, performance-wise. But many logs compress really well, and for this the MySQL archive storage engine (insert-only, no indexes, gzip'ed storage) can be used.

You often want to scan across a few hours or days worth of logs, and indexes are poor for this purpose as the large number of disk seeks can kill performance. And full table scans of years of logs is not all that much fun either. For this, table partioning (supported in MySQL 5.1) is very useful. Store each day or week of logs in a separate table partition, partitioned on day (maybe use the 5.1 event sceduler, or simply a cron job, to add new partitions automatically). Then …

Just a quick note while it is in my head:

When testing software, especially for performance, remember to test on the same hardware you intend to deploy on. One trend I have seen for some time is that testing is often done on whatever happens to be lying around and not otherwise assigned.

While you can certainly test MySQL or an email server on such hardware, you should at least be aware that by providing hardware that does not match what you use in production you will not get an accurate picture, and sometimes the differences can be dramatic. This is especially true of enterprise software with high demands for memory and storage such as databases and MTAs: running such software on an old desktop or five-year-old server will not provide an accurate picture of how the software will perform on a multicore server with several gigabytes of RAM and a RAID array.

My advice is this: if you know you will be deploying the solution …

A client informed me of TheDailyWTF and I've subsequently read it quite frequently. It often features bad SQL of all dialects. It also features stupid business rules, management blunders, bad authentication, bad validation, race conditions and dodgy error messages. You'll certainly remember what not to do and when the forum comments aren't sarcastic and purile then you'll also gain insight into good practice.

If you're completing the survey then please mention your MySQL experience :-)