There’s lots of buzz lately about the so-called “open-core” business model of Marten Mickos’s new employer. But this is nothing new. Depending on how you define it, InnoDB is “open-core,” and has been for a long time. The InnoDB Hot Backup (ibbackup) tool was always closed-source. Did anyone ever cry foul and claim that this made InnoDB itself not open-source, or accuse Innobase / Oracle of masquerading as open-source? I don’t recall that happening, although sometimes people got suspicious about the interplay between the backup tool and the storage engine. Generally, though, the people I know who use InnoDB Hot Backup have no gripes about paying for it.

What is the difference between open-source with closed-source accessories, and …

I have old applications that need to read (and write) MyISAM tables that themselves receive lots of bulk updates. Time to try MySQL-Proxy.

MySQL Proxy is light on documentation and very few people written anything about working.   Most of what I have read says MySQL-Proxy is not ready for prim time.  I have hope so I had to give it a try.

I started with thee VMware servers. I setup one master and two read only slaves.   I tested the replication with mysqlslap from another independent server and it worked fine.  The slave never ran more then a second behind.

I downloaded mysql-proxy-0.8.0.tar.gz (64x version).  I …

Dr. Richard Hipp gave a talk at Southeast Linux Fest today on choosing an open-source database. He thinks that NoSQL is not a very good name for the new databases we’re seeing these days, so he proposed a new name: postmodern databases. Why postmodern?

• The absence of objective truth
• Queries return opinions, not facts

I thought this was the best proposal I’ve heard for an alternative to the NoSQL moniker. And this is not bashing — the absence of objective truth can actually be an enabling quality, not necessarily a drawback. There’s a lot to compliment about the new databases, and calling them NoSQL is really a disservice — like calling a car a horseless carriage.

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1. …

A common problem I see people running into when using a cloud computing service is the trap of under-provisioning. There’s a chain effect that leads to this result: 1) people don’t understand how virtualization works, and therefore 2) they don’t realize how much of a computing resource they’re really buying, so 3) they assume they are entitled to more than they really are, and 4) they under-provision. A few other causes and effects come into play here, too. For example, the choice to use the cloud is sometimes founded on economic assumptions that frequently turn out to be wrong. The cloud service looks more economically attractive than it really is, due to under-provisioning.

Let’s get back to this idea that people under-provision. How do I know that’s happening? I’ll use anecdotal evidence to illustrate. Here’s a real quote from a recent engagement about database (MySQL) performance problems:

Do you think it’s …

A lot of conversations with a few different people I respect (no links, sorry) have coalesced some thoughts about these newly popular “non-relational” datastores. I wanted to point out an aspect I’m not sure is very clear in the hot-topic department. This is about what happens when managers learn that their developers or operations team have installed some new technology in their systems without them knowing it.

Lest anyone think that this happens only in a poorly-managed company, I can attest that it happens everywhere, all the time. Remember Marten Mickos’s favorite story about salespeople asking prospects if they used MySQL, the managers saying absolutely not, and the developers contradicting them?

The moment of discovery is unpleasant for the manager, but everything leading up to it was a joy for the programmer. He decided that he’s annoyed with the MySQL database. SQL is hard anyway — it is such a pain to write …

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Is MariaDB really a drop in replacement for MySQL?   I’m running CentOS 5.4.  What happens if…

1. Use “mysqldump –all-databases > FullBackup.sql” to make a full backup. (Better safe then sorry)
2. Go to http://askmonty.org/wiki/MariaDB:Download and download the CentOS 5 packages.
3. Stop msql “service mysqld stop”
4. Pull MySQL out by the roots with “rpm -e mysql-server mysql –nodeps”
5. Install Maria with “rpm -i Maria-*”

And the install start mysql up again.  Wow.  That’s “Drop in”.

If your reading this, you’re seeing it works.

Do you have MyISAM tables you reload with new data?

Do your queries, using that table, get blocked because the table is locked?

Do the waiting queries create idle connections slowing down the table load?

Do you wish you could just replace the table?

Years ago I was told you can replace CSV tables by simply replacing the CSV file. I figured this would also be true of a MyISAM file and it is. I use this perl script to replace MyISAM tables forcast and current observation weather data. The processing and tables are created on another computer. Weather forecasting is CPU and database expensive. I then copy (rsync) the files to the production system and run this script.

#!/usr/bin/perl
################################################################################
################################################################################
# mg_hot_replace_table.pl - Hot Replace a MySQL table.
#
# 2010-05-01 …

A now-famous quote that I probably don’t need to attribute: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

Where is Drizzle in this lifecycle? I’ve been hearing and reading some comments to the tune of “those Drizzle guys think it’s easy to rip MySQL stuff out and start over, wait till they see how hard it’s going to get when the real world sinks in.” Maybe, maybe. But maybe not, too. Maybe not.

I’ve seen more than one software project that was belittled as “never gonna amount to anything, save your time” and went on to do quite well. Never underestimate the power of a handful of passionate and talented people. I personally feel that Drizzle has a bright future.

Related posts:

1. Please re-license the MySQL documentation In the pas …

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I read in his blog Jonathan Schwartz is leaving Sun/Oracle.  Jonathan was the CEO, Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Jonathan has been the force at Sun driving open source.  His voice will not be heard at Oracle so I’m wondering if this will make a change in the way projects like MySQL, Open Solaris and Open Office will be managed.

Much has been made of certain limitations of MySQL’s query optimizer (“planner”). Subqueries, lack of sort-merge joins, and so on. This is not MySQL-bashing and no one should be offended. Some people have worked to make things better, and that code is in branches that were intended for future releases. But if that work were available right now, would you trust it?

This question is important because the optimizer is complex and full of compromises and black magic. Even minor changes occasionally have weird edge cases that cause a regression in some workload. Are major changes trustworthy?

I’ll give a specific example. In version 5.0, MySQL gained the ability to use more than one index for a query. This is called index_merge in EXPLAIN, and sometimes people think it’s the best thing ever. In practice, I can say two general things about queries that use an index_merge plan:

1. If the optimizer chooses an …