Today is the MySQL performance tuning workshop.

Here's a good quote: Performance costs money, whatever road you take.

The first hour has been an overview of the principals of performance tuning: what performance means, how it is measured, the practices used.

(incidentally nobody seems to really have time for training these days, most people have company email open as a bare minimum, some also have SSH sessions back to their work machines to moniter servers and whatnot)

Some talk on the MySQL threading model, how each connection gets a thread. Talk about thread pooling and the helper threads.

On to memory management, the different global buffers, per-thread memory, etc. Have to remember that on Windows you have a 3GB memory limit to what you allocate to MySQL.

Remember that per-thread memory settings have to size to you max connections and still be within memory limits.

General …

arjen_lentz: MySQL thread cache

It should be noted however that creating and destroying threads on some platforms is a very very cheap operation. Linux with NPTL (esp on x86) is one such platform.

(even without NPTL on x86 it’s stil pretty cheap).

On PPC with LinuxThreads it’s quite expensive.

On PPC with MacOS X it’s also very expensive.

I think i’ve blogged about this previously.

But users on MacOS X, Windows and Linux without NPTL should certainly consider using the thread cache. Otherwise, if you’re on x86 with NPTL you probably don’t have to bother - or at least you notice a very small benefit.

Yusuf Goolamabbas asked me:Arjen, The mysql 5.0 datasheet refers "server side thread pool" as a 5.0 feature. Could you elaborate on this in a blog post. Does this imply that solutions like sqlrelay SQL Relay are not needed for connection pooling in 5.0 ?Here's the post, Yusuf!

All versions of MySQL Server have a thread cache (tunable with thread_cache_size). Currently, connection to the server runs in its own thread. Creating a thread costs time, so rather than killing the thread when a connection closes, the server can keep the thread in its thread cache, so it can be used for new connection later. A very handy feature, but it has nothing to do with connection pooling.

There is definitely a use for tools like SQL Relay, also with MySQL 5.0

Here comes the time to upgrade from MySQL 3.23 to the latest MySQL 5.0. In the first part, I will guide you through the MySQL 3 to MySQL 4 upgrade.

MySQL recommends we upgrade to next series available.

As a general rule, we recommend that when upgrading from one release series to another, you should go to the next series rather than skipping a series. For example, if you currently are running MySQL 3.23 and wish to upgrade to a newer series, upgrade to MySQL 4.0 rather than to 4.1 or 5.0.

• Read upgrading section for the release series to which you are upgrading, change notes to learn about new features.
• Backup your databases.
• Making changes to the grant tables. Read ?Upgrading the Grant Tables?.
• Read …

I did it!
Well, there are 32 people plus myself interested in a Boston MySQL meetup.

So I did it:

http://mysql.meetup.com/137/

Please join if you’re interested. (feel free to link, pass on, etc).

We're coming onto the last call for papers at the 2006 MySQL Users Conference.  That's right, get your submissions in by November 7.  Since the conference team is normally swamped with papers that come in during the last 24 hours, you do get a bit of a competitive edge if you get your paper in early.  Also be sure to target your talk to the audience.  Pick the track that you want to focus on and make sure your presentation includes practical information that is helpful to MySQL users, not just theory.  Topics that show real world use, best practices and showcase unique capabilities of MySQL tend to be very popular.  Hands on information, technical details, performance tips, tuning & optimization, use of new features in 5.0 or MySQL Cluster are always welcome, as are meaty …

Matt Asay has written a great piece entitlted Self-Indulgence and Silicon Valley.

Living in Silicon Valley, it’s easy to forget this simple fact: no one else cares about technology as much as the Valley’s denizens do. No one. Other people make money in other ways, and so technology doesn’t live front and center in their lives. It’s a complement, at times, but not their lifeblood.

(go read the rest of the article; it’s very enlightening).

Reading this article really struck a nerve with me, albeit on another level.

I work for MySQL, which may be the world’s largest company based almost entirely on a virtual organisation. That means I spend all of my working time looking at a couple of screens, interacting with my colleagues almost …

In their latest installment, Certification Magazine has published an article by Yours Truly.

Go read it

Today, I launched this blog and became aware of MySQL 5.0 being released. I have decided to upgrade MySQL from 3.23.56 to 5.0. This post will contain my review and the next post will include my upgrade to MySQL 5.0 details.

First some exciting stuff about MySQL

QUICK LOOKS: (MySQL 5.0 Whitepaper)

• MySQL has six million active installations worldwide
• 40,000 MySQL downloads occur every day.
  

Countless corporations, educational facilities, and government agencies rely on MySQL to manage their critical data assets and service anywhere from hundreds to billions of requests per day. With over six million active installations worldwide and 40,000 downloads occurring every day, the popularity and prominence of MySQL continue to rise.


reliability, performance and ease-of-use are "the three priorities of the MySQL database …

MySQL 5.0 Released for Production
MySQL 5.0 Now Available for Production Use Enterprise Platform Vendors Express Enthusiastic Support for World's Most Popular Open Source Database Major New Version Delivers Advanced SQL Standard-Compliant Features Such as Stored Procedures, Triggers, Views & New Pluggable Storage Engines

UPPSALA, Sweden & CUPERTINO, California. -- October 24, 2005 -- MySQL AB, developer of the world's most popular open source database, today announced the general availability of MySQL 5.0, the most significant product upgrade in the company's ten-year history. Starting today, MySQL 5.0 can be downloaded under the open source GPL license at http:/dev.mysql.com.

"We are quite proud to deliver this new version of MySQL -- as it includes the most-requested features from our users, customers and partners," said Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL AB. …