Tungsten Replicator 2.0.7 was released today. In addition to a large number of bug fixes, this release adds several improvements for multi-master management, and support for Amazon RDS (as a slave).

While the Release Notes show a long list of improvements, I would like to focus on some of them that improve the handling of multi-master deployments.

When we released version 2.0.6, we added the first revision of the cookbook recipes in the build. That was still a green addition, which caused several bug reports. But since then, we have integrated the cookbook in our internal testing, making these recipes more robust and reliable. We are also planning to improve them and eventually …

How do you implement a parallel algorithm for a software which needs to be streamed to tapes?
How do you ensure that you have the capability to be able to tune the level of parallelism for varying input and output devices and varying levels of load?
These were some of the questions that we needed to answer when we were trying to implement multi-threading capability for MySQL Enterprise Backup (MEB).
The trivial way of achieving parallelism is by having the multiple threads pick up the different files (in a file per table) scenario. But this did not seem adequate because:
a) The sizes of these files (corresponding to the tables) could be different and then one large file would limit the level of parallelism since it would be processed by a single thread.
b) If you have to stream the backup how do you reconcile these multiple files being streamed by separate threads? Large backups are streamed directly to tape so it is …

The MySQL Enterprise Backup 3.8.1 release's main goal was support MySQL 5.6 server. But also beyond that primary goal MEB team added some valuable new options and features to ensure you'll get most from the new features in 5.6 as well. At a glance, here are some of the highlights,

MEB copy of InnoDB undo log tablespaces

MySQL 5.6 introduces a new feature to store undo logs in separate files called as undo tablespaces for improved performance. These undo tablespaces are logically part of system  tablespace. All the commands associated with MEB - "backup", "apply-log" and "copy-back"  now take care of the undo tablespaces in the same way as they process the system tablespace. MEB now supports innodb_undo_directory[logs][tablespace] option variables. When backup is executed, undo datafiles (up to number specified by innodb_undo_tablespaces) are stored in same directory as the datafiles of system tablespace. During …

The latest releases of MySQL Sandbox, in addition to deal with minor bugs, have mostly been necessary because of compatibility issues in MySQL, both 5.5 and 5.6.

When I found that MySQL 5.6 has some InnoDB tables inside the 'mysql' schema, I had to change the way that the sandbox used to remove all contents (the ./clear command.)

To achieve a smooth clean up, MySQL Sandbox now performs a dump of the mysql schema, and uses that saved data to restore the schema after a complete wipeout.

Unfortunately, when 5.5.30 was released, this operation resulted in a warning, due to a behavioral change.

After a careful change, and about 1200 unit tests, the latest version of …

With data volumes and user populations growing, its no wonder that database performance is a hot topic in developer and DBA circles.  

Its also no surprise that continued performance improvements were one of the top design goals of the new MySQL 5.6 release which was declared GA on February 5th (note: GA means “Generally Available”, not “Gypsy Approved” @mysqlborat)

And the performance gains haven’t disappointed:

- Dimitri Kravtchuk’s Sysbench tests showed MySQL delivering up to 4x higher performance than the previous 5.5 release.

- Mikael Ronstrom’s testing showed up to 4x better scalability as thread counts rose to 48 and 60 …

MySQL Server 5.6 GA has several new features. These new features are supported in the latest version of Connector/Net 6.6.5. We'll review them into a brief introduction and example about how to use them inside any .Net Application.

The MySQL team seems to have a very peculiar idea about defaults and compatibility. Recently, I wrote about an annoying warning that cannot be removed. And previously, I noticed that MySQL 5.6 mixes warnings, info lines and errors in the same bunch of excessive chattiness.

With MySQL 5.5.30 came another headache. When I run a mysqldump of the 'mysql' schema, I get this warning:

$. mysqldump mysql > m.sql
-- Warning: Skipping the data of table mysql.event. Specify the --events option explicitly.

OK. No big deal. What if I tell the little troublemaker that I DON'T WANT the events table?

$ mysqldump --skip-events mysql > m.sql
-- Warning: Skipping the data of table …

A new version for Connector/Net 6.6 has been released. This new 6.6.5 version includes several new features that support the new capabilities included in MySQL Server 5.6, which recently has became at GA state.

MySQL 5.6 is now generally available. Read the press release.

Chock-full of new enhancements and features around performance, scalability and availability, MySQL 5.6 is the best MySQL release ever. Read Rob Young's blog article on the key enhancements in MySQL 5.6.

This is open source goodness all around.

Congratulations to the MySQL Engineering team on delivering a stellar product release yet again for the MySQL community and users!

The PERFORMANCE SCHEMA was first introduced in MySQL 5.5, and provided some instrumentation.

With MySQL 5.6, the existing instrumentation has been improved a lot, and a lot of new instrumentation was added also.

Now is a good time to review the overall picture ...

The performance schema tables
In 5.5, the tables available are:

mysql> show tables;
+----------------------------------------------+
| Tables_in_performance_schema                 |
+----------------------------------------------+
| cond_instances                               |
| events_waits_current                         |
| events_waits_history                         |
| events_waits_history_long                    |
| events_waits_summary_by_instance             |
| events_waits_summary_by_thread_by_event_name |
| events_waits_summary_global_by_event_name    |
| file_instances                               |
| …