There are many areas you need to review when addressing MySQL performance such as current database load, executed SQL statements, connections, configuration parameters, memory usage, disk to memory ratio, hardware performance & bottlenecks just to name a few.

If you were to just look at the data that is held in the database, what would you consider?
Here are my tips, when looking just at the data.

1. What is the current database size?
2. What is the growth of data over time, say daily, weekly?
3. Which are the 2 largest tables now?
4. What 2 tables are growing the fastest?
5. What tables have greatest churn, specifically DELETE’s?
6. How often do you optimize your tables?
7. What is your archiving/purging strategy? Do you even have one?
8. Review data types? I average 25% reduction in footprints, just by choosing optimal data types, generally with zero …

Hi again!

As a sidekick for my previous post, I came up with a snippet of code that generates the Google Chart URL to visualize table size for the current database. For example, for the sakila sample database, we get URL's like this:

 …

Abstract - As described by Walter Heck, MySQL database size can be visualized using Google Charts. With a minor code improvement the URL for the chart can be obtained twice as fast. With some more modification, the number of lines can be cut down resulting in a function that is half as long.

Hi!It's been a while since I posted - I admit I'm struggling for a bit to balance time and attention to the day job, writing a book, preparing my talks for the MySQL user's conference and of course family life.

A month ago or so I …