Monitoring MySQL Memory is a rather critical task because you can’t limit MySQL’s usage of physical memory resources. Improperly configured servers running MySQL can crash because you don’t understand memory usage.

MySQL uses memory in a number of different ways. Using the Oracle analogy, you can divide the mysqld memory usage into main areas of:

• SGA - System Global Area
• PGA - Process Global Area

The SGA is the footprint that MySQL uses for startup. This is attributed to the base footprint of the mysqld process and a number of buffers including:

• key_buffer_size - For MyISAM Indexes (note you can define multiple key_buffer’s The MyISAM Key Cache) …

Two more adoption stories; they both use GFv2 and MySQL Server, but while one is a traditional Java EE story, the other is a Rails App ported from Mongrel.

The MidwifeMate application spans the web tier (JSF/Facelets), EJBs and JPA. They use Hibernate talking to a MySQL Server and develop on Eclipse using the …

I have raised this specific topic 3 times this week alone, twice in a MySQL setting.

The fundamental philosophy of testing is NOT to verify features of your product that work, it is to BREAK your system.

One such discussion this week was with a service provider that deployed a new system into an existing ecosystem. The release has been delayed due to development issue, and credibility with customers is now being further damaged because the system is reaching physical hardware limitations after just one month.

With this was described to me, my simple response was. You did not test you system to stress the system to breaking point. To know the limit of your capacity ahead of time is a proactive analysis, not a reactive one.

It’s not that complicated to do, easier in early stage before you have a 50-100-1000 server total environment, but it’s a best practice not see often enough.

As I referenced in my prior entry, I'm reviewing Sun's three major strategic imperatives, and our progress going in to next fiscal year. Our strategic imperatives, in order, are:

1. Technology Adoption
2. Commercial Innovation
3. Efficiently Connecting 1. and 2.

This entry focuses on the first, Technology Adoption. Adoption is a non-economic phenomena, no money is spent, only time - yet it has extreme financial consequences. Let me give you an example.

I was with a big customer of ours last year, and reading through my account briefing before the meeting, I knew we were doing well. An analysis of their download activity showed they were heavy users of Solaris and OpenSolaris, and they had a large internal community of MySQL users, as well. In the meeting, their CIO said "we love where Solaris is headed." I …

Correctly managing your MySQL database objects such as schemas, tables, indexes, base data etc, is critical to the success of a 24×7 online website. I rarely encounter a robust working solution as part of my consulting so I would like to share my experience in identifying the best practices you should be adopting whether your an existing organization or just an individual with a simple website.

Much of the following concept actually pre dates my involvement in MySQL (since 1999), so this is not just applicable for a MySQL RDBMS. For the purposes of this discussion I’d like to focus on the theory successfully used with clients.

Under version control I have the following directory structure:

NOTE If your first observation was “Arrh, Version Control?”, you are in more trouble then you want to be right from day one. You need Version Control such as svn, cvs, bzr, git etc for any website no matter how small.

We've been making a fair number of announcements recently - on both the product and the partnering front. That's generated a lot of interest, and a fair number of questions. So I thought I'd take the opportunity to deliver this overview and the upcoming focused discussions on what makes Sun tick in a video format. Let me know if this is useful, or what else we can do to keep you informed via the comment field at the bottom.

We're approaching the end of our fiscal year, and given all the swirl in the economy, I thought it worthwhile to restate where Sun's headed as a company, to let customers, partners, employees and investors see and understand where we're headed. Clarity's always useful, doubly so in times of uncertainty.

Let me start by joining the chorus of those worried about the global economy. I am routinely talking to customers now partially owned by governments, whose share prices have declined 95% or more, whose balance …

MySQL University keeps rolling along. We’ve had some fantastic sessions just recently (not including my own, of course!), such as Lenz’s presentation of backing up MySQL with filesystem snapshots, Allan Packer’s presentation on the optimization of MySQL and, going back a little further, David Van Couvering and Petr Pisl’s talk on using PHP and MySQL within Netbeans.

Remember that all of these presentations can be viewed again online if you missed them first time round!

We’ve got some good topics coming up, but we ned more!!

Got some hot topic that you want to tell the world about?

Using MySQL in an interesting way?

Got a good MySQL scalability story that you want to tell?

Developed a great storage engine?

Any and all of these topics are welcome for discussion and presentation at MySQL University.

Did anybody notice that http://planetmysql.org now redirects to http://planet.mysql.com?

Curious to know the reason why, perhaps an official MySQL person can give us some details.
Also it’s a 302 redirect, not a 301 redirect, interesting?

 wget http://planetmysql.org
--2009-02-26 14:40:09--  http://planetmysql.org/
Resolving planetmysql.org... 213.136.52.29
Connecting to planetmysql.org|213.136.52.29|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 301 Moved Permanently
Location: http://www.planetmysql.org/ [following]
--2009-02-26 14:40:10--  http://www.planetmysql.org/
Resolving www.planetmysql.org... 213.136.52.29
Connecting to www.planetmysql.org|213.136.52.29|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 Found
Location: http://planet.mysql.com/ [following]
--2009-02-26 14:40:10-- …

I can’t stress enough that people look at SQL statements that are being executed against your production MySQL database, and you optimize queries when you can.

Often it’s the improvement to the large number of similar queries executed that can optimize resources. In this example, we take a very simple query, and by removing an unnecessary order by, we eliminate MySQL internally creating a temporary (in memory) table.

So what’s the big deal.

• The query is simpler to read and understand
• Memory required for the connection is not assigned
• A number of internal steps are no longer required (4 of 21 logging messages, not an ideal measurement, but an indication). In this case, it was easily a 10% performance improvement for each query.

This query is executed 10-100 times per second, so the improvement in performance is significant.

mysql> explain select max(mdate) …

In 1809, a hero in America's Revolutionary War, General John Stark, was forced to decline an invitation to a military reunion due to ill health. He sent a toast to be read in his absence that began, "Live Free or Die." That phrase is now the official motto of the American state of New Hampshire (where Stark lived), known for a fierce sense of independence (and no income taxes).

Hold that thought for a moment.

Today, we're announcing the single biggest and most important OEM/distribution agreement Sun's ever signed for the open source Solaris operating system - through which we'll be joining forces with the world's largest supplier of high volume servers, Hewlett Packard. As a result of the deal, Solaris gains tier 1 status, …