‘Synchronous’, multi-master, auto-everything – that’s the new MySQL Group Replication (IPC14 talk/slides) in simple words. After torturing PHP developers for decades with MySQL Replication there is now a new replication option which does not require read-write splitting. A system that does not know about slave lags and reading stale data. In theory, MySQL Group Replication is just about the perfect approach to run a standard PHP application (WordPress, Drupal, …) on a small cluster (3-7 nodes) in LAN settings. In theory, MySQL Group Replication improves both availability and performance.

MySQL Group Replication talk given today at the International PHP Conference 2014 (Munich) …

The MySQL replication and load balancing plugin for PHP, PECL/mysqlnd_ms, aims to make using a cluster of MySQL servers instead of a single server as transparent as possible. Should you ever want to migrate your PHP app from a single MySQL server to any kind of MySQL cluster, install PECL/mysqlnd_ms and see how much breaks. A simple app, might need no code changes at all. Your APIs connect call remains unchanged, your query execution calls remain the same: one connection handle transparently switched to an appropriate cluster node (read-write splitting, weighted load balancing, …).

/* Or, …

XA transactions are an open standard for distributed transactions. A distributed or global transaction can spawn multiple databases. XA transactions come handy, for example, when data sets are sharded over multiple servers and a business transaction affects multiple shards. The free MySQL Fabric tools help to setup and manage a sharded MySQL cluster. The development version of PECL/mysqlnd_ms 1.6 helps with XA transactions. It abstracts SQL details and acts as a transaction manager. The PHP MySQL driver kicks in when things go wrong and XA transactions show their nasty side: blocked servers. Good news: this is a rare case. Bad news: a deep dive …

The development version of PECL/mysqlnd_ms now has an very early version of distributed (2PC/XA) transaction support tailored for use with clusters of MySQL servers. XA transactions can span multiple servers in a cluster to ensure transaction guarantees among them. In real life, there is always, at some point, a sequence of work on your data for which atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability must be given. The early generation of NoSQL sharding solutions has a weak spot here. How do you, as a developer, ensure a logical operation affecting two shards is either applied to both or none? Either you don’t …

A legend is born: PHP Unconference Europe, Majorca. Nearly one hundred witnesses exist. The #phpuceu combines the proven concept of an unconference with the beauty of the island of majorca. Within a day after the end of the event, one third had bought a ticket for next years issue (May 9-10, 2015)! We all knew for years, unconferences work. We finally have one at a place that is easy to get and is just about perfect for any kind of visitor. Goal accomplished. Just a detail, PHP (partner happieness program) was missing…

The power of the people

Unconferences give power to the people. Participants gather in the morning to propose sessions and vote on an agenda for the day. Sponsors and participants never …

Majorca! May 2014 – 17./18! Could there be a better place and time on earth for the PHP EU Unconference: sun, fun, plenty of cheap flights, affordable accommodation? The PHP EU Unconference (tickets) is the international version of the national unconference. The national one frequently sells out quickly (>350 tickets) not only because it matches other conferences despite the ticket price of ~40 Euro only. Traditionally the international one, is more cosy with about 100 elePHPant lovers coming in the years before.

A schedule that really matters – with a solid fallback…

The key to success is the very nature of an unconference. There is no call …

Inspired by Antony, Andrey has implemented a memory optimization for the PHP mysqlnd library. Depending on your usage pattern and the actual query, memory used for result sets is less and free’d earlier to be reused by the PHP engine. In other cases, the optimization will consume about the same or even more memory. The additional choice is currently available with mysqli only.

From the network line into your script

Many wheels start spinning when mysqli_query() is called. All the PHP MySQL APIs/extensions (mysqli, PDO_MySQL, mysql) use a client library that handles the networking details and provides a C API to the C extensions. Any recent PHP will default to use the mysqlnd library. The library speaks the MySQL Client Server …

PECL/mysqlnd_ms 1.6 is currently being modified to support sharding and fully automatic server and client failover when using MySQL Fabric (slides) to manage a farm of MySQL servers. PECL/mysqlnd_ms is a mostly transparent load balancer that works with all PHP MySQL APIs (PDO_MySQL, mysqli, …). The idea is, that if, for example, a MySQL server fails, the plugin talks to MySQL Fabric to learn about alternative servers that Fabric has provisioned automatically. This “talks to” gives implies a performance penalty for applications. One worth looking at, to understand it. One worth looking …

The MySQL Fabric framework brings two major features: automatic client- and server-side failover and sharding. The manual hints, you need a “Fabric aware driver” for this but it does not list one for PHP. First, you don’t necessarily need new drivers! Second, the "driver" for PHP is the current development version of the PECL/mysqlnd_ms replication and load balancing plugin. The plugin covers the sharding but not the failover/HA quickstart example of Fabric: how the plugin works and why you should not use the plugin – yet.

Partial replication: the unlimited mode

At some …

MySQL Fabric is a framework for MySQL Replication high availability, automatic failover and sharding. Technically, a MySQL Fabric daemon monitors a set of MySQL servers and takes appropriate actions upon failure. Clients use Fabric aware drivers to learn about failed servers and shards to distribute queries accordingly. Simple to understand, simple to sell, simple to raise false expectations and simple to fail [, dear Sales]. With the usual blog posts telling only the story of the first three sentences, major parts of the story are covered in silence.

Development preview = announcement of a vision != ready

You first challenge will be to find the documentation for the MySQL Fabric development preview. From the documentation overview page it takes three clicks down to the server side documentation for Fabric:

1. …