The latest from the MySQL community

I had a hard time coming up with a title for this blog post. I really wanted to capture its essence. Several discarded titles include, but are not limited to:

• How It Works
• The Gory Details
• Everything You Never Wanted to Know
• The Insider's Perspective

I picked the lamest one, hoping that it is catchy enough to ensnare the unfortunate soul that comes across my blog. Just in case you don't know by now, I work for MySQL (ok, Sun) on the Enterprise Tools team. We're approaching (some sort of) release of MySQL Enterprise Monitor 2.0, with the headline feature Query Analysis.

What I want to achieve with this article is to give definitions, data, flow, etc., that describe how we look at things internally in the architecture of the application. This is intended to give the hapless reader an idea of what Query Analysis can do, and consequently what it can not.
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The Malta MySQL User Group (MMUG) met for the second time this Thursday, and compared to last time, we had a much better venue: Ixaris Systems let us use their board room, so we had all the tools we needed to have a good meeting.

We managed to get a group picture before everyone has arrived, so I guess we can call the people in this picture “early birds”.

Once we all arrived, however, Sandro Gauci from EnableSecurity gave us a very interesting talk on SQL Injection security, and general security flaws from a developer point a view. You can find the slides here: sql-injection.pdf.

Here’s a picture of Mr. Gauci while presenting. (Sorry for the obvious problem with the over-white picture — seems like I …

Are you in Melbourne/VIC, and are you an experienced DBA needing to tune InnoDB? Or do you just maintain some MySQL instances on the side and need to know more about proper installation, security and backup/recovery methods?

Well... the upcoming Open Query course days in Melbourne still have seats available. The topics:

• Monday 15 September: MySQL Installation, Security and User Management (AUD 475 + GST)
  MySQL Server is easily set up and ready to go within mere minutes, however this does not make it suitable for a production environment in terms of performance, security, and monitoring. Additional …

Welcome to the 112th edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs.

First, thanks to last issue’s contributors–Joe Izenman, Dan Norris, and Jason Massie–for snatching victory from the jaws of defeat and making LB#111 a worthwhile read. That’s what it’s all about!

Oracle’s up first, starting with our old friend Doug Burns and his Time Matters series, in which he holds up to the light the concept of …

During the process of building the new query analysis feature for MySQL Enterprise Monitor 2.0, we thought the best way to test it at a nascent stage was to use it to tune our own application (since we use MySQL as the backend repository). What we found was actually quite interesting. It also showed that even to seasoned developers, who know that frameworks while helpful, often aren't the most direct, concise way to get things done, can often do very strange things that you don't quite expect.

For those of you that haven't heard about the feature itself, "query analysis" takes all queries that are being processed by a MySQL server, normalizes them into something similar to a prepared statement form by removing literals, and then keeps track of total, min/max, average execution times, result set sizes, etc. at an aggregate …

In writing my last article, I mentioned working with John Arbash Meinel, one of the lead developers of Bazaar, in attempting to diagnose and fix the performance bottlenecks apparent in using Bazaar with larger, history-rich projects like the MySQL Server. Well, after running some tests and building a custom branch of Bazaar that John pointed me to, I am happy to tell you that help is just around the corner. In my last article, you saw that doing a bzr branch lp:mysql-server took 91 minutes. This was a significant barrier to entry, I recognize. So, I think you'll be happy to see the results below, taken yesterday using John's patched-up Bazaar branch:

[529][jpipes@serialcoder: /home/jpipes/repos/mysql-server/5.1]$ time test_bzr …

my.cnf is an option file(also sometimes called configuration file),which provides a way to specify commonly used options so they they need not be entered on the command line each time you run a program.This file is read by mysql server (mysqld) or any of the mysql client programs.

Here is a small my.cnf file
# Example MySQL config file for small systems.
# The following options will be passed to all MySQL clients

[client]
#password    = your_password
port        = 3306
socket        = /tmp/mysql.sock

# Here follows entries for some specific programs

# The MySQL server
[mysqld]
port        = 3306
socket        = /tmp/mysql.sock
skip-locking
key_buffer = 16K
max_allowed_packet …

my.cnf is an option file(also sometimes called configuration file),which provides a way to specify commonly used options so they they need not be entered on the command line each time you run a program.This file is read by mysql server (mysqld) or any of the mysql client programs.

Here is a small my.cnf file
# Example MySQL config file for small systems.
# The following options will be passed to all MySQL clients

[client]
#password    = your_password
port        = 3306
socket        = /tmp/mysql.sock

# Here follows entries for some specific programs

# The MySQL server
[mysqld]
port        = 3306
socket        = /tmp/mysql.sock
skip-locking
key_buffer = 16K
max_allowed_packet …

Continuent is probably best known for its database clustering technology for MySQL, as well as PostgreSQL, but the company has for some time had its sights set on expanding beyond open source databases and enabling horizontal database scalability.

It has just taken a major step towards delivering on both counts with the launch of Tungsten, its new stack of open source middleware technologies designed to enable low-cost databases to scale horizontally for database failover and continuity.

Tungsten includes includes Sequoia, the existing …

Wow indeed, it's been almost a year already! How time flies... I left MySQL in July 2007, and had two months much needed holiday.

But one needs to live, and opportunity in Australia was clearly there, so I started Open Query in September and went for part familiar, part less familiar territory. The less familiar was consulting, in the sense that there had been no MySQL consulting in Australia by either me or MySQL directly, ever. I had done consulting before, in my old software development company in The Netherlands, as well as for others (I built a training & consulting firm for someone else).

The more familiar (in the MySQL realm) was of course training, as I'd been teaching courses here for years. The way that came about:In 2001, MySQL AB hired me as a tech writer for the docs, however my boss Kaj had just come in from Polycon which had developed MySQL training materials. Since I also had training experience, I …