To operate any database efficiently, you need to have insight into database performance. This might not be obvious when everything is going well, but as soon as something goes wrong, access to information can be instrumental in quickly and correctly diagnosing the problem.

All databases make some of their internal status data available to users. In MySQL, you can get this data mostly by running 'SHOW STATUS' and 'SHOW GLOBAL STATUS', by executing 'SHOW ENGINE INNODB STATUS', checking information_schema tables and, in newer versions, by querying performance_schema tables.

These methods are far from convenient in day-to-day operations, hence the popularity of different monitoring and trending solutions. Tools like Nagios/Icinga are designed to watch hosts/services, and alert when a service falls outside an acceptable range. Other tools such as Cacti and Munin provide a graphical look at host/service information, and give historical …

In this blog post, I’ll discuss some of the MySQL and MariaDB default configuration differences, focusing on MySQL 5.7 and MariaDB 10.2. Percona Server for MySQL uses the same defaults as MySQL, so I will not list them separately.

MariaDB Server is a general purpose open source database, created by the founders of MySQL. MariaDB Server (referred to as MariaDB for brevity) has similar roots as Percona Server for MySQL, but is quickly diverging from MySQL compatibility and growing on its own. MariaDB has become the default installation for several operating systems (such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux/CentOS/Fedora). Changes in the default variables can make a large difference in the out-of-box …

While working on something unrelated, I came across the server status flags that are exposed to client connections by the client library. I have never used those flags myself, but as I understand they are meant to provide some context to applications and proxies which would otherwise have to do some fairly expensive things to obtain that information.

What stroke me as odd is that there is no way to see those flags from interactive sessions in the MySQL command-line client. Like applications or proxies, human beings need context, especially when multi-tasking and switching between multiple tabs or windows. That's precisely the reason why the command prompt in the mysql client can be customized via the …

While working on something unrelated, I came across the server status flags that are exposed to client connections by the client library. I have never used those flags myself, but as I understand they are meant to provide some context to applications and proxies which would otherwise have to do some fairly expensive things to obtain that information.

What stroke me as odd is that there is no way to see those flags from interactive sessions in the MySQL command-line client. Like applications or proxies, human beings need context, especially when multi-tasking and switching between multiple tabs or windows. That's precisely the reason why the command prompt in the mysql client can be customized via the …

Good news ! The MySQL & Friends Devroom has been accepted for Fosdem’s 2018 edition !

This event is a real success story for the MySQL ecosystem, the content, the speakers and the attendees are growing every year.

Fosden 2018’s edition will take place 3rd & 4th February in Brussels and our MySQL & Friends devroom will run on Sunday 4th. FOSDEM & MySQL is a love story started 18 years ago !

The committee selecting the content for our devroom is not yet created and if you want to be part of this experience, just send me an email (candidate at mysqlandfriends dot eu) before Oct 20th .

If you want to join the Committee you have to align with the following conditions:

– planning to be present at FOSDEM
– having a link with …

I periodically do MySQL Troubleshooting tutorials. Every time I run them I have a dilemma on how to make tutorials more interactive. I tried:

1. Just talk. But troubleshooting is about action, not about sitting and listening 
2. Put tasks on my own website which required a lot of coding, not related to the talk and tasks themselves.
3. Put tasks on VirtualBox image. Many attendees do not want to use flash drive or download big image from Internet.
4. Put tasks into Amazon EC2 instance. This is practically good option, but expensive.
5. Use machines, provided by tutorial organizers (conference or training center). This is, probably, the best option, but few do it.

I did not like any of these options as final solution. That's why for my last two tutorials I tried Stepik platform. This is how " …

Join Percona Chief Evangelist Colin Charles as he covers happenings, gives pointers and provides musings on the open source database community.

This week: a quick roundup of releases, a summary of my thoughts about Percona Live Europe 2017 Dublin, links to look at and upcoming appearances. Oracle OpenWorld happened in San Francisco this past week, and there were lots of MySQL talks there as well (and a good community reception). I have a bit on that as well (from afar).

Look for these updates on Planet MySQL.

Releases

• Red Hat Software Collections 3.0 Beta now has MariaDB 10.2.7, MongoDB …

It was expected for a long time…. here is the fix for bug #199 !!

The bug #199 submitted by PeterZ has been fixed in 8.0. Thank you to Zhang Simon for his contribution that inspired us to implement the fix.

Let’s have a look at the test case described in the bug report, I will reproduce it on MySQL 5.7.19 & MySQL 8.0.3.

The initial steps are exactly the same on both versions:

mysql> create table a(id int unsigned not null primary key auto_increment);
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.17 sec)

mysql> show create table a\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
       Table: a
Create Table: CREATE TABLE `a` (
  `id` int(10) unsigned NOT …