A recent article at CNN talks about how MySQL operates.

As one of the MySQL team, I can attest that works, but it requires a significant amount of coordination, and lots of online communication through email, IRC, Skype and other methods to keep everbody talking and all the projects working together.

The flip side to that process is that we all get involved in different areas, and you tend to be much more aware of what is going on company wide. There is also better cooperation - because we can all get involved we can all provide our experience and expertise to a wide range of problems and projects. Also, because we come from such a wide range of backgrounds and environments, we have a much wider perspective.

So not only does remote, and earth-wide staffing work, but it provides us with a level of cooperation …

Many of the MySQL team use IBM computers by preference to do their developing on; and I know that, for some, a lot of the reason was the support for Linux.

Now Lenovo owns IBM’s hardware business, but it seems they are dropping support for Linux (that’s a Slashdot link, because, as always, the comments are as interesting as the story).

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As some of you may already know, there are plans afoot (actually well underway) to standardize the myriad tools currently used to manage MySQL backup and restores into a generalized online backup API. Those regular readers of SysAdmin magazine will have noticed the excellent dual-part article by Thomas Weeks in the May and June 2006 editions. In both articles, Weeks hints at the online backup API in the works at MySQL.

One of the frustrations that MySQL DBAs currently have is the lack of a consistent, recommended backup strategy that is storage-engine agnostic. Currently, you have a wealth of choices which work best depending on your use of MyISAM, InnoDB, as well as the size of your data set and the downtime interval you can afford.

Greg Lehey, a senior software engineer at MySQL, has been tasked with the design and implementation of a generic online backup API for MySQL. …

“reserved for child molesters and people who talk at the theatre”

(also Malcolm Reynolds if he takes sexual advantage of “Mrs. Reynolds”[1])

I’d like to add to that people who don’t merge their patches.

Special hell.

[1] If you don’t get the Firefly reference you haven’t watched Firefly enough. Go do that. Now. No, you can’t do work first. Firefly, now!

it’s also good to note that this is mostly tongue in cheek. although MERGE YOUR FRIGGEN PATCHES BEFORE PUSHING. Every time you don’t, a cute bunny and baby dies.

One of the things that MySQL is particularly good at it is supporting many different platforms, from Linux to Windows to Mac to really weird flavors of operating systems. In general, our documentation and, especially, our community ecosystem of authors and article contributions does tend to be heavily biased towards the *nix operating systems.

However, download statistics show that a significant (>40%) of MySQL Community Edition server downloads are for the Windows platform. My gut instinct is that a large percentage of these downloads are from developers who use Windows as their main development platform, regardless of whether their production platform runs on Windows.

Over the past six months or so, I have heard a number of complaints regarding the lack of quality articles and documentation that specifically focus on the Windows platform, from either an administrative or development angle. The MySQL forums for …

Knoppix 5.0.1 available:
It looks quite nice, although some of the packages are very up to date and others are quite old. MySQL comes with 5.0.21, so there’s probably no distribution with a more recent MySQL version at the moment.

No Markus, Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper actually comes with 5.0.21 just as well. On June 1. And with their new Casper system, the CD you download is actually a LiveCD and an Install CD all rolled into one! 5.0.22 is a security release, for what its worth…

After reading about recursion and stack frames, I decided that I'd re-implement a computer strategy game. This fun game has various implementations and various names, including Chain Reaction and Atom Smasher. However, few, if any, have implemented a network version with the game logic written in MySQL stored procedures.

This strategy game is addictive, hard to describe and simple to play. The board consists of a number of territories. The objective is to win all of the territory. Players gain territory by placing counters in territories, one per turn. Once a territory is claimed by a player, a competing player cannot claim the territory directly. Instead, when a player's turn causes counters to exceed the number of adjacent territories then counters are redistributed among adjacent territories and the adjacent territory is gained by the player. (In some …

InnoDB has a mechanism to regulate count of threads working inside InnoDB.
innodb_thread_concurrency is variable which set this count, and there are two friendly variables
innodb_thread_sleep_delay and innodb_concurrency_tickets. I'll try to explain how it works.

MySQL has pluginable architecture which divides work between mysql common code
(parser, optimizer) and storage engine. From storage engine's point of view it works how
(very simplified):
mysql calls storage engine's methods:

read_row (there are a couple of methods like read by index or sequential read or random read);
write_row;
update_row;
delete_row;

At start of each of these methods InnoDB checks count of already entered threads,
and if this count is over innodb_thread_concurrency then the thread …

I’ve decided to affectionally call the MySQL Workbench Product “The Anaconda”. It’s been a wrestle so far to get all the features and functionality I wanted in this product. Of course I’d much rather have seen this product at say version 0.5, or 0.6, as I would not feel as guilty towards my comments of a 1.0 product when I’m having issues. I also have great respect for Mike Zinner and this small team of GUI developers that are developing and supporting the MySQL GUI products. Nevertheless, here is my latest round of analysis of the product across various platforms.

Hardware

Machines

1. Dell Inspiron 5150 P4 3.2GHz 1GB RAM, 80GB & 120GB HDD
2. Generic Desktop PIII 866MHz
3. Dell Inspiron 500 PIII 600MHz

Operating Systems

For the purposes of these tests I’m going to run multiple OS’s installed on seperate drives to attempt to isolate and reproduce …

In Korean there is no such word as "Federated". I learn this while having to help the translator here translate my slides :)

The closest word in Korean is the term "merge".

In MySQL a "merge" table though is nothing like a "federated" table.

Oy Veh!