This morning I received an update on a MySQL bug, someone added a comment on an issue I filed in November 2003, originally for MySQL 4.0.12 and 4.1.0. It’s MySQL bug#1956 (note the very low number!), “Parser allows naming of PRIMARY KEY”:

[25 Nov 2003 16:23] Arjen Lentz
Description:
When specifying a PRIMARY KEY, the parser still accepts a name for the index even though the MySQL server will always name it PRIMARY.
So, the parser should NOT accept this, otherwise a user can get into a confusing situation as his input is ignored/changed.

How to repeat:
CREATE TABLE pk (i INT NOT NULL);
ALTER TABLE pk ADD PRIMARY KEY bla (i);

'bla' after PRIMARY KEY should not be accepted.

Suggested fix:
Fix grammar in parser.

Most likely we found it during a MySQL training session, training days have always been a great bug catching …

Sometimes you want to reduce disk usage on certain servers by adjusting the time that binary logs are kept.  Also, some installations of MySQL and MariaDB have suffered from a very-hard-to-catch bug where the binary logs end up not getting automatically expired (basically, the expire_logs_days option doesn’t always work effectively).

A workaround can be scripted, but typically the script would specify the exact datetime to which the logs need to be kept.  The reference manual and examples all do this too, quite explicitly, noting:

The datetime expression is in the format ‘YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss’.

However, the actual command syntax is phrased as follows:

PURGE { BINARY | MASTER } LOGS { TO ‘log_name’ | BEFORE datetime_expr }

and that indicates much more flexibility in the parser: “datetime_expr” means that you …

The TEXT and VARCHAR definitions in many db schemas are based on old information – that is, they appear to be presuming restrictions and behaviour from MySQL versions long ago. This has consequences for performance. To us, use of for instance VARCHAR(255) is a key indicator for this. Yep, an anti-pattern.

VARCHAR

In MySQL 4.0, VARCHAR used to be restricted to 255 max. In MySQL 4.1 character sets such as UTF8 were introduced and MySQL 5.1 supports VARCHARs up to 64K-1 in byte length. Thus, any occurrence of VARCHAR(255) indicates some old style logic that needs to be reviewed.

Why not just set the maximum length possible? Well…

A VARCHAR is subject to the character set it’s in, for UTF8 this means either 3 or 4 (utf8mb4) bytes per character can be used. So if one specifies VARCHAR(50) CHARSET utf8mb4, …

Open Source is a whole-of-process approach to development that can produce high-quality products better tailored to users’ real world needs.  A key reason for this is the early feedback cycle built into that complete process.

Simply publishing something under an Open Source license (while not applying Open Source development processes) does not yield the same quality and other benefits.  So, not all Open Source is the same.

Publishing source of a product “later” (for instance when the monetary benefit has diminished for the company) is meaningless.  In this scenario, there is no “Open Source benefit” to users whatsoever, it’s simply a proprietary product. There is no opportunity for the client to make custom modifications or improvements, or ask a third party to work on such matters – neither is there any third party opportunity to verify and validate either code …

You may not be aware that the mechanism used to fingerprint the SSL certificates that  keep your access to websites encrypted and secure is changing. The old method, known as SHA1 is being deprecated – meaning it will no longer be supported. As per January 2016 various vendors will no longer support creating certificates with SHA1, and browsers show warnings when they encounter an old SHA1 certificate. Per January 2017 browsers will reject old certificates.

The new signing method, known as SHA2, has been available for some time. Users have had a choice of signing methods up until now, but there are still many sites using old certificates out there. You may want to check the security on any SSL websites you own or run!

To ensure your users’ security and privacy, force https across your entire website, not just e-commerce or other sections. You may have noticed this move on major websites over the last …

http://www.itnews.com/article/3004953/use-oracles-database-watch-out-for-this-dec-1-deadline.html

Companies that use a standard edition of Oracle’s database software should be aware that a rapidly approaching deadline could mean increased licensing costs.

Speaking from experience (at both MySQL AB and Open Query), typically, licensing/pricing changes such as these act as a motivator for migrations.

Migrations are a nuisance (doesn’t matter from/to what platform) and are best avoided as they’re intrinsically painful, costly and time-consuming. Smart companies know this.

When asked in generic terms, we generally recommend against migrations (even to MySQL/MariaDB) for the above-mentioned practical and business reasons. There are also technical reasons. I’ll list a …

Some time ago, Peter Boros at Percona wrote this post: Rotating MySQL slow logs safely. It contains good info, such as that one should use the rename method for rotation (rather than copytruncate), and then connect to mysqld and issue a FLUSH LOGS (rather than send a SIGHUP signal).

So far so good. What I do not agree with is the additional construct to prevent slow queries from being written during log rotation. The author’s rationale is that if too many items get written while the rotation is in process, this can block threads. I understand this, but let’s review what actually happens.

Indeed, if one were to do lots of writes to the slow query log in a short space of time, a write could block while waiting.

Is the risk of this occurring greater during a logrotate operation? I doubt it. A FLUSH LOGS has to …

log_warnings = 2

Yields useful information in the MariaDB or MySQL error log file (or syslog on Debian/Ubuntu) you don’t want to miss out on.

You will know about aborted connections, which are otherwise only visible through global status as Aborted_connects (lost connection before they completed authentication) and Aborted_clients (cut fully authenticated connection).

It looks like

130523 2:14:05 [Warning] Aborted connection 173629 to db: 'unconnected' user: 'someapp' host: '10.2.0.50' (Unknown error)

You will know when, where from, and if for instance a wrong password was used you’ll see the username. Basically you’ll get as much info as the server has available at that point. Useful.

Having an InnoDB table without a PRIMARY KEY is not good. Many have known this for years, but exact opinions as to why have differed. From observation, it was clear to me that it impacted performance.

InnoDB stores its row data in the leaf nodes of the primary key B+tree structure, that means that it can’t work without… so if you don’t specify a PK, it makes one up. Seems pretty innocuous and shouldn’t actually perform any worse than an auto-inc field. Except that in reality the performance can be much much worse. Annoying. Naturally we recommend clients to always have a PK (auto-inc, a composite of foreign keys, or if need be a natural key) but production systems cannot always be quickly changed, depending on the app code adding a column is not something you can just do at the DBA level.

Recently my good friend and former colleague Jeremy Cole, who has been delving into the depths of InnoDB, asked me if I had any …

Dawnstar Australis (yes, nickname – but I know him personally – he speaks with knowledge and authority) updates on The Real Victims Of The Click Frenzy Fail: The Australian Consumer after his earlier post from a few months ago.

Colourful language aside, I believe he rightfully points out the failings of the organising company and the big Australian retailers. From the Open Query perspective we can just review the situation where sites fall over under load. Contrary to what they say, that’s not a cool indication of popularity. Let’s compare with the real world:

1. Brick & Mortar store does something that turns out popular and we see a huge queue outside, people need to wait for hours. The people in the queue can chat, and overall …