MySQL Performance Blog

Despite being standard Innodb feature forever Insert Buffers remains some kind of mysterious thing for a lot of people, so let me try to explain thing a little bit.

Innodb uses insert buffer to “cheat” and not to update index leaf pages when at once but “buffer” such updates so several updates to the same page can be performed with single sweep. Insert buffer only can work for non-unique keys because until the merge is performed it is impossible to check if the value is unique.

Insert buffer is allocated in the Innodb system table space. Even though it is called “buffer” similar to “doublewrite buffer” it is really the space in the tablepace. Though it can be cached in the buffer pool same as other pages. This property allows insert buffer to survive transaction commits and even MySQL restarts. Really it may take weeks before the given index page is merged, though usually it is much sooner than that.
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As we’ve said before, the Percona team just keeps growing. This time around, I’m pleased to welcome Ryan and Vladimir.

Ryan Lowe initially joined us from Florida (USA) in June. In his previous lives he scaled an Alexa top 1000 site with a sharded MySQL backend, worked in aerospace, worked in telecom, and lots of other things. His background as a consultant, DBA (with Oracle, too!), DBA manager, and programmer makes him a great match for Percona’s clients. He also contributed some improvements to Wordpress, and he blogs here and on Pablowe.

Vladimir Fedorkov joins us from Lipetsk in the Russian Federation. (Brrr!) Vladimir and Peter have known each other and worked together for years in past endeavors. Vladimir can make Sphinx do just about anything, and is an expert systems administrator too. (Did you know that we provide systems administration services to our clients? It’s not all about query optimization.) Vladimir is also the leader of one of our groups of consultants (codename: Mercury) and is helping us solidify core parts of our services offerings.

Vladimir and Ryan, a big welcome — we are fortunate indeed you’re working with us. And… go team!

PS: I can’t help but triple-dip, and point out that our own Ewen Fortune has been a MySQL Cluster Certified DBA for quite a long time now. OK, shameless plug over. And, congratulations Nicklas!