The latest from the MySQL community

My saga with RSS continues. As I stated before, changes to MySQL's forum site led me to pursue using an RSS reader as my main interface to the forums. That worked quite well until recently. My only issue had been that the various replies to a post showed as separate entries to the reader, with no connection between them. Coming back from a self-imposed hiatus, I find that this problem has been fixed, at the expense of creating another one. Now, each thread shows up once only in the reader, along with an indication of how many replies have been posted. This is fine, except that the thread is not marked as updated, and so threads that get replied to are never highlighted as unread by the reader. This of course makes it extremely difficult to conduct timely and efficient interactions with someone on the board. I now have to peruse the forum web page with the thread …

This is the configuration file of MySQL. For new DBAs, depending on your needs (eg. if the database is small, medium, large), just copy the appropriate my.cnf in /usr/local/mysql/support-files/ . Then just change couple of parameters and you are all set. There is no need to make a huge fuss about it. Many experts will tell you to change this file, I recommend not to listen to them. MySQL was created to be simple... If you really need to change it, then make sure you know what you are doing.

Our Services team do regular surveys on our Support customers. I just had a look at the latest data from proactive calls during July to November 2007. In the sample, the Platinum, Gold, Silver and Basic levels were roughly equally big slices, with a bit fewer Gold and a bit more Basic.

The figures are quite interesting. One out of two top conclusions is that we seem to need some more evangelising among our customers, especially for MySQL Enterprise Monitor and for the MySQL Enterprise Knowledge Base.

• Between half and two-thirds of the surveyed customers have heard of Monitoring; the higher the SLA level, the more.
• The Knowledge Base has more penetration than …

In the last article the performance impact of joins was shown.  This one will demonstrate cases where denormalized joins are a bit faster, as will the third article with larger data volumes.  The fourth article, the most interesting one, will show where a denormalized data model can be 50 times faster than a normalized data model. 

Here are the tables that will be involved in the sql.  The normalized ProductSmall table has a 100 million rows and is about 0.67 gig. 

create table ProductSmall (

    productSmallId int(11) not null,

    productSmallName varchar(32) not null,

    productGroupId int(11) not null,

    primary key (productSmallId),

    key idx_ProductSmall_productGroup (productGroupId),

    constraint con_ProductSmall_productGroup

My thinking was that the topic is already dead, but people have strange ideas off and on again. Have a look at the S9Y boards where you'll find someone who wants to have a storage backend "LDAP" for S9Y. This is sick and wrong! Let me explain why.


Continue reading "LDAP is not relational"

I am now an employee of MySQL. I guess my transition from Oracle to MySQL is complete.

I am super-excited to have signed on as a support engineer for MySQL! As you can read in my earlier posts, I had great experiences with MySQL support, so I’m really glad (and honored) to join the team.

Now I need to decide what direction I want to take this blog in. Maybe start a new blog with a different focus – I haven’t decided yet. Meanwhile, I have a lot of learning to do and have to get up-to-speed on things so I can be sure to do the support team proud! It’s going to be a little different from being a DBA, that’s for sure…

Anyway, I have a lot of ideas for future blog entries, but it might take a little while… Stay tuned.

Red Hat launches MRG. Centeris rebrands as Likewise, updates software. Sun open sources system management code. (and more)

Red Hat’s Linux Automation Delivers 100-Fold Performance Gains with Messaging, Realtime and Grid Technologies, Red Hat (Press Release)

Centeris is now Likewise Software; Announces Availability of Likewise Enterprise 4.0, Likewise (Press Release)

Sun Releases Sun xVM Ops Center For Automated Datacenter Management, Sun Microsystems (Press Release)

MADE IN IBM LABS: IBM Contributes Framework to Eclipse Foundation, IBM (Press …

SURFnet, a Dutch provider of Internet connectivity and innovative security, authentication, authorisation, group communication and video services to higher educational and research organisations, has integrated the MySQL Cluster database into the core of its SURFfederatie service.

What is the optimal OS partition layout for a database server?

I’ve seen so many different configurations for OS partitions of recent time, none to my satisfaction.
Historically, in Unix days 20 years agao, long before RAID and SAN’s all my experiences were for strongly defined partitions.
That is separate partitions for the OS /, /boot, /tmp, /usr, /var and then seperate partitions for effectively application and data with /home and /opt

Today what is optimal for an OS configuration on a database server.
I’m seeking the input and experiences of the community. I’m making the assumption of at least RAID 1 or better for all disks.

It’s obvious that the database partition must be separate, and given snapshot capabilities both the data and binary logs should be specified on the same partition for consistency.
It’s also obvious the /tmp filesystem should not be with the / file system. You …

MySQL AB announced today that Axway, the leading global provider of Collaborative Business Solutions, and a subsidiary of the French Sopra Group, has chosen to integrate the MySQL Embedded Server into its Synchrony global platform.