If you are a director, manager or project manager who works with DBAs, you probably have had the nagging suspicion at one time or another that a DBA’s assertions regarding his or her practices lack an empirical or scientific basis, or are simply deflections intended to pass the buck.

Manager: Mr. DBA, the application is really slow. Do you have any idea what’s wrong?

DBA: Oracle is very complex. It could be any of 100 different possible causes. I will begin checking each. Anyhow, what makes you think it is the database?

Some DBAs are professional, thoughtful scientific-minded contributors. But the sad truth is that many DBAs lack the skills to professionally manage their systems. To cover, they use deflections such as the example above, or fall back on old, long-disproved practices without the benefit of evidence. Why is this true of DBAs?  One reason is that the …

Blue Gecko works with clients who run many different operating systems.  Our preference generally is RedHat Enterprise Linux or CentOS, but we have customers who range far and wide from there including Solaris, Windows, SuSE, and (more and more) Debian and Ubuntu.

As we’ve become more familiar with Debian and Ubuntu we have found that those customers who use the MySQL packages that are distributed with these OSs have a few quirks to be aware of.

Baron Schwartz posted a long description of one of these, the challenge with /etc/mysql/debian-start at the MySQL Performance Blog.  In the short version, if this script isn’t disabled, it will run a mysqlcheck each time /etc/init.d/mysql start is invoked.  This has been changed in later versions of Debian, but legacy systems may still …

The new licensing that was announced by Oracle earlier this month caused some FUD in the community that was addressed last week in an updated graphic comparing support and binary options and blog post from Oracle.  However, one of our customers sent me this earlier this week –

We are now re-evaluating whether we want to renew our MySQL Enterprise License.  As hard as I tried, I am still confused at what we get from the license we paid other than professional support.

In other words, I don’t know whether we are paying for the binary (for features not found in the Community version) or for the Service? I thought they are two different things. But it is just not clear on their Website.

Do you have some insight …

I’m happy to note (this is internal Open Query happiness but I’m pleased to share) that so far we have a 100% renewal rate for our Proactive Services for MySQL subscriptions. Some of the early clients have grown in the initial period and are have now moved to a higher # of hours (this can also be changed upward during a term), which is of course excellent both for the clients and for us.

I was in eager anticipation of this time since the introduction of the concept late last year, as it is of course the essential proof of whether a subscription service actually works over time. Ideally, you’d want renewal to be a simple straightforward process, with the client having experienced the value of the service. This is relatively straightforward in this case, since it’s not an insurance, emergency or retainer type arrangement – the client actually gets benefits each and …