I’ve recently become supremely disappointed in the availability of Nagios checks for RAID cards. Too often, I see administrators rely on chance (or their hosting provider) to discover failed drives, a dying BBU, or a degrading capacity on their RAID cards. So I began work on check_raid (part of check_mysql_all) to provide a suite of [...]

The MySQL configuration file, e.g. /etc/my.cnf has a number of different section headings including [mysql], [mysqld], [mysqld_safe]. It is important that you ensure you put the right variables into the right section. For example, the following my.cnf configuration file will not operate as the user probably expects.

[mysqld]
...
log-bin=mysql-bin
server-id=1
query_cache_size = 100M
query_cache_type = 1

...

[mysqld_safe]
...
key_buffer_size=600M
skip-innodb
...

In this example, this configuration does not give you a MyISAM key buffer of 600M, it’s actually the default of 8M.

mysql> show global variables like 'key_buffer_size';
+-----------------+---------+
| Variable_name   | Value   |
+-----------------+---------+
| key_buffer_size | 8388600 |
+-----------------+---------+

Be sure to add the right options to the [mysqld] section.

What I didn’t know until yesterday was that some programs read from …

I hit this interesting problem last night on 5.0.51a.

mysql> use information_schema;
mysql> desc routines;
ERROR 1 (HY000): Can't create/write to file '/home/tmp/#sql_fea_1.MYD' (Errcode: 24)
mysql> show create table routines\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
       Table: ROUTINES
Create Table: CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE `ROUTINES` (
  `SPECIFIC_NAME` varchar(64) NOT NULL default '',
  `ROUTINE_CATALOG` varchar(512) default NULL,
  `ROUTINE_SCHEMA` varchar(64) NOT NULL default '',
  `ROUTINE_NAME` varchar(64) NOT NULL default '',
  `ROUTINE_TYPE` varchar(9) NOT NULL default '',
  `DTD_IDENTIFIER` varchar(64) default NULL,
  `ROUTINE_BODY` varchar(8) NOT NULL default '',
  `ROUTINE_DEFINITION` longtext,
  `EXTERNAL_NAME` varchar(64) default NULL,
  `EXTERNAL_LANGUAGE` varchar(64) default NULL,
  `PARAMETER_STYLE` varchar(8) NOT NULL default '',
  `IS_DETERMINISTIC` varchar(3) NOT NULL default '',
  `SQL_DATA_ACCESS` varchar(64) NOT …

The performance schema changes are now in the ‘mysql-next-mr’ tree. This means the feature is irrevocably part of the next milestone.

Documentation:

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/performance-schema/en/

Blog postings in order of appearance:

http://blogs.mysql.com/peterg/2009/02/05/mysql-performance-schema/

http://blogs.mysql.com/peterg/2009/02/06/mysql-performance-schema-2/>

http://blogs.mysql.com/peterg/2009/02/09/mysql-performance-schema-3/
…

David Coveney from interconnectit.com has written an excellent tutorial of how to use MySQL Workbench with XAMPP, a very nice bundle of Apache, MySQL, PHP and Perl. If you are running XAMPP or what to give it a try, make sure to check out his tutorial that describes how to set the correct MySQL Server Instance profile parameters.

This tutorial is also a good resource for people who do not use a default installation of MySQL and need to manually adjust their MySQL Server Instance profile parameters in order to make their setup work with MySQL Workbench. Default installations should work out of the box of course.

Please find the tutorial here: …

This tweet from former MySQL AB CEO Mårten Mickos caught my eye. It shows a trend of increased demand for MySQL and PostgresSQL expertise while job postings on job websites for  those with Oracle and Ingres expertise declined.

I was a little shocked by the graph until you realize it’s just a trend. I then looked at the absolute number of jobs requesting database expertise and the story quickly becomes clear….

…

MySQL requires special consideration in the Oracle+Sun merger, otherwise both Oracle and MySQL users and vendors will literally pay the price. If you agree, please sign this petition now.

To be very clear, Open Query is in favour of the merger, we feel that overall it’s a good fit. We would also like to see it happen quickly, as obviously this is best for Sun employees and clients, as well as Oracle’s broad business prospects.  Read more

It finally dawned on me while reflecting on the year past this Sunday that the missing voice since the announcement of the Oracle acquisition of Sun Microsystems (and therefore MySQL) has been the MySQL employees.

When I worked as an employee for MySQL Inc, the acquisition by Sun Microsystems in 2008 lead to several requirements about the acquisition.

• You were not allowed to talk about the acquisition publically.
• You were not allowed to communicate with any Sun (i.e. the acquirer) resources.

In other words it was “business as usual” which is really an oxymoron, because business will never be exactly as it was before the announcement. The ongoing delay in pending acquisition by Oracle Corporation is really hurting everybody with getting on with doing their jobs, being happy with their work, and making a difference in open source and in the lives of all the benefit from using MySQL.

…

With the beta releases of MySQL Workbench 5.2 well under way, we recently announced the EOL (http://www.mysql.com/support/eol-notice.html) of the MySQL GUI Tools Bundle.

The MySQL Tools team has been working on MySQL Workbench 5.2 to give DBAs and developers an integrated tools environment for:

• Database Design & Modeling
• SQL Development (replacing MySQL Query Browser)
• Database Administration (replacing MySQL Administrator)

MySQL Workbench 5.2 also provides:

• Remote Administration (using SSH-Tunneling)
• Python scripting and plugins
• Native GUI for Windows, Mac, Linux

A future release of MySQL Workbench (post 5.2) will add a migration plugin, providing features comparable to the MySQL Migration Toolkit component of the MySQL GUI Tools Bundle.  We will …

I was contacted by Doug Henschen on Monday for an article he was writing for Intelligent Enterprise on Oracle’s just announced promises to the European Commission regarding MySQL.  It turns out Doug was polling all the major open source data warehousing and business intelligence vendors to get our perspectives on the promises, and it appears as if we all had roughly the same response:  “cautious optimism” as Doug put it.

Having invented the industry’s first SQL Chip that improves the performance and scalability of reporting and analytics for MySQL by 10x – 1000x, we have been keenly interested and aware of Oracle’s announced intent to acquire Sun, and along with it MySQL.  While we have architected our product to work with other database management systems …