In many MySQL Benchmarks we can see performance compared with rather high level of concurrency. In some cases reaching 4,000 or more concurrent threads which hammer databases as quickly as possible resulting in hundreds or even thousands concurrently active queries. The question is how common is it in production ? The typical metrics to use [...]
Automation: A case for synchronous replication
Just yesterday I wrote about math of automatic failover today I’ll share my thoughts about what makes MySQL failover different from many other components and why asynchronous nature of standard replication solution is causing problems with it. Lets first think about properties of simple components we fail over – web servers, application servers etc. We [...]
MySQL Life Cycle. Your Feedback is needed.
When I started with MySQL 3.22 I would start running MySQL from early beta (if not alpha) and update MySQL the same date as release would hit the web. Since that time I matured and so did MySQL ecosystem. MySQL is powering a lot more demanding and business critical applications now than 12 years ago [...]
How (not) to find unused indexes
I’ve seen a few people link to an INFORMATION_SCHEMA query to be able to find any indexes that have low cardinality, in an effort to find out what indexes should be removed. This method is flawed – here’s the first reason why:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 | CREATE TABLE `sales` ( `id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, `customer_id` int(11) DEFAULT NULL, `status` enum('archived','active') DEFAULT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (`id`), KEY `status` (`status`) ) ENGINE=MyISAM AUTO_INCREMENT=65691 DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1; mysql> SELECT count(*), status FROM sales GROUP by status; +----------+---------+ | count(*) | status | +----------+---------+ |   65536 | archived | |     154 | active | +----------+---------+ 2 rows in set (0.17 sec) mysql> EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM sales WHERE status='active'; # query 1 +----+-------------+-------+------+---------------+--------+---------+-------+------+-------------+ | id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key   | key_len | ref  | rows | Extra      | +----+-------------+-------+------+---------------+--------+---------+-------+------+-------------+ | 1 | SIMPLE     | sales | ref | status       | status | 2      | const | 196 | Using where | +----+-------------+-------+------+---------------+--------+---------+-------+------+-------------+ 1 row in set (0.06 sec) mysql> EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM sales WHERE status='archived'; # query 2 +----+-------------+-------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+-------+-------------+ | id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra      | +----+-------------+-------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+-------+-------------+ | 1 | SIMPLE     | sales | ALL | status       | NULL | NULL   | NULL | 65690 | Using where | +----+-------------+-------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+-------+-------------+ 1 row in set (0.01 sec) |
The cardinality of status index is woeful, but provided that the application [...]
Percona welcomes Ryan Lowe and Vladimir Fedorkov
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 …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.
…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 …
7 Reasons why MySQL Quality will never be the same
I had a call with Monty the other day and I told him why I think MySQL Server Quality will never be the same again. I’ve been thinking a bit more about it and here is the extended list. In particular I think MySQL Server will never be able to reach its original quality guidelines [...]
MySQL 5.1 went to GA. Was it a good move ?
MySQL 5.1 release as “GA” seems to be the most controversial to date. It had very negative response from Monty, original MySQL Founder and controversial responses in community including another beating by Kevin Burton. There is also very interesting reading on MySQL 5.1 open bugs So how do I take it and where do I [...]
MySQL End Of Life (EOL) Policy
We’ve discussed today how we should implement MySQL Version advisory in mk-audit tool. One obvious questions was to look at the end of life – it is often bad idea to run MySQL versions past end of life as even security bugs may not be fixed in these (though do not get paranoid, if you’re [...]
Percona turns two today !
July 31st 2006 was my last day working for MySQL and August 1st I started what later was incorporated Percona with Vadim joining me September 1st as co-founder. Two years is a significant anniversary for any startup – surviving (and being profitable) for 2 years can be seen as validation of our business model and [...]
Economics of Performance Optimization
I think every person responsible for Development or Operations of growing application sooner or later have to decide on couple few questions on how to tackle application performance. These questions are: Should we Optimize Application or get more Hardware ? Should we do things ourselves or hire an experts to help us ? The answer [...]

