I’ve never been a very big fan of MyISAM; I would argue that in most situations, any possible advantages to using MyISAM are far outweighed by the potential disadvantages and the strengths of InnoDB. However, up until MySQL 5.6, MyISAM was the only storage engine with support for full-text search (FTS). And I’ve encountered many [...]
Announcing Percona Server for MySQL version 5.5.29-30.0
Percona is glad to announce the release of Percona Server for MySQL version 5.5.29-30.0 on February 26th, 2013 (Downloads are available here and from the Percona Software Repositories). Based on MySQL 5.5.29, including all the bug fixes in it, Percona Server 5.5.29-30.0 is now the current stable release in the 5.5 series. All of Percona‘s software is open-source and free, all the details [...]
Percona Server on the Raspberry Pi: Your own MySQL Database Server for Under $80
There are many reasons for wanting a small MySQL database server: You’re a uni student who wants to learn the SQL language better and needs a mini-testbox You’re a Windows user who wants to play around with Percona Server on Linux You’re a corporate application developer who wants a small SQL development & test box [...]
MySQL 5.5 and MySQL 5.6 default variable values differences
As the part of analyzing surprising MySQL 5.5 vs MySQL 5.6 performance results I’ve been looking at changes to default variable values. To do that I’ve loaded the values from MySQL 5.5.30 and MySQL 5.6.10 to the different tables and ran the query:
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 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 | mysql [localhost] {msandbox} (test) > select var55.variable_name,left(var55.variable_value,40) value55, left(var56.variable_value,40) var56 from var55 left join var56 on var55.variable_name=var56.variable_name where var55.variable_value!=var56.variable_value; +---------------------------------------------------+------------------------------------------+------------------------------------------+ | variable_name | value55 | var56 | +---------------------------------------------------+------------------------------------------+------------------------------------------+ | PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA | OFF | ON | | PID_FILE | /mnt/data/sandboxes/msb_5_5_30/data/mysq | /mnt/data/sandboxes/msb_5_6_10/data/mysq | | CHARACTER_SETS_DIR | /mnt/nfs/dist/mysql-5.5.30-linux2.6-x86_ | /mnt/nfs/dist/mysql-5.6.10-linux-glibc2. | | PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA_MAX_COND_INSTANCES | 1000 | 836 | | PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA_MAX_MUTEX_INSTANCES | 1000000 | 3282 | | OLD_PASSWORDS | OFF | 0 | | INNODB_STATS_ON_METADATA | ON | OFF | | PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA_EVENTS_WAITS_HISTORY_SIZE | 10 | 5 | | PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA_EVENTS_WAITS_HISTORY_LONG_SIZE | 10000 | 100 | | PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA_MAX_RWLOCK_INSTANCES | 1000000 | 1724 | | PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA_MAX_TABLE_HANDLES | 100000 | 2223 | | INNODB_LOG_FILE_SIZE | 5242880 | 50331648 | | BASEDIR | /mnt/nfs/dist/5.5.30 | /mnt/nfs/dist/5.6.10 | | BACK_LOG | 50 | 80 | | OPEN_FILES_LIMIT | 1024 | 5000 | | INNODB_AUTOEXTEND_INCREMENT | 8 | 64 | | MAX_CONNECT_ERRORS | 10 | 100 | | SORT_BUFFER_SIZE | 2097152 | 262144 | | LC_MESSAGES_DIR | /mnt/nfs/dist/mysql-5.5.30-linux2.6-x86_ | /mnt/nfs/dist/mysql-5.6.10-linux-glibc2. | | MAX_ALLOWED_PACKET | 1048576 | 4194304 | | JOIN_BUFFER_SIZE | 131072 | 262144 | | TMPDIR | /mnt/data/sandboxes/msb_5_5_30/tmp | /mnt/data/sandboxes/msb_5_6_10/tmp | | TABLE_OPEN_CACHE | 400 | 2000 | | INNODB_VERSION | 5.5.30 | 1.2.10 | | INNODB_BUFFER_POOL_INSTANCES | 1 | 8 | | QUERY_CACHE_SIZE | 0 | 1048576 | | SLOW_QUERY_LOG_FILE | /mnt/data/sandboxes/msb_5_5_30/data/dpe0 | /mnt/data/sandboxes/msb_5_6_10/data/dpe0 | | TABLE_DEFINITION_CACHE | 400 | 1400 | | PORT | 5530 | 5610 | | QUERY_CACHE_TYPE | ON | OFF | | REPORT_PORT | 5530 | 5610 | | PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA_MAX_FILE_INSTANCES | 10000 | 1556 | | SQL_MODE | | NO_ENGINE_SUBSTITUTION | | INNODB_OLD_BLOCKS_TIME | 0 | 1000 | | LOG_ERROR | /mnt/data/sandboxes/msb_5_5_30/data/msan | /mnt/data/sandboxes/msb_5_6_10/data/msan | | VERSION_COMPILE_OS | linux2.6 | linux-glibc2.5 | | THREAD_CACHE_SIZE | 0 | 9 | | PLUGIN_DIR | /mnt/nfs/dist/5.5.30/lib/plugin/ | /mnt/nfs/dist/5.6.10/lib/plugin/ | | SYNC_RELAY_LOG | 0 | 10000 | | GENERAL_LOG_FILE | /mnt/data/sandboxes/msb_5_5_30/data/dpe0 | /mnt/data/sandboxes/msb_5_6_10/data/dpe0 | | PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA_MAX_TABLE_INSTANCES | 50000 | 445 | | SYNC_RELAY_LOG_INFO | 0 | 10000 | | SLAVE_LOAD_TMPDIR | /mnt/data/sandboxes/msb_5_5_30/tmp | /mnt/data/sandboxes/msb_5_6_10/tmp | | SECURE_AUTH | OFF | ON | | VERSION | 5.5.30 | 5.6.10 | | INNODB_CONCURRENCY_TICKETS | 500 | 5000 | | INNODB_PURGE_THREADS | 0 | 1 | | INNODB_OPEN_FILES | 300 | 2000 | | INNODB_DATA_FILE_PATH | ibdata1:10M:autoextend | ibdata1:12M:autoextend | | INNODB_PURGE_BATCH_SIZE | 20 | 300 | | PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA_MAX_THREAD_INSTANCES | 1000 | 224 | | SOCKET | /tmp/mysql_sandbox5530.sock | /tmp/mysql_sandbox5610.sock | | INNODB_FILE_PER_TABLE | OFF | ON | | SYNC_MASTER_INFO | 0 | 10000 | | DATADIR | /mnt/data/sandboxes/msb_5_5_30/data/ | /mnt/data/sandboxes/msb_5_6_10/data/ | | OPTIMIZER_SWITCH | index_merge=on,index_merge_union=on,inde | index_merge=on,index_merge_union=on,inde | +---------------------------------------------------+------------------------------------------+------------------------------------------+ 56 rows in set (0.05 sec) |
Lets go over to see what are the most important changes [...]
Adventures in archiving
One of our Remote DBA service clients recently had an issue with size on disk for a particular table; in short this table was some 25 million rows of application audit data with an on disk size of 345GB recorded solely for the purposes of debugging which may or may not occur. Faced with the task of [...]
MySQL 5.6: Improvements in the Nutshell
Preparing for my talk for Percona MySQL University in Raleigh,NC, Tuesday 29th of January I have created the outline of improvements available in MySQL 5.6 which I thought was worth sharing to give a feel for how massive work have been done for this release in variety of areas. I’m sure the list is not [...]
Is there room for more MySQL IO Optimization?
I prefer to run MySQL with innodb_flush_method=O_DIRECT in most cases – it makes sure there is no overhead of double buffering and I can save the limited amount of file system cache I would normally have on database server for those things which need to be cached — system files, binary log, FRM files, MySQL [...]
Be productive with the MySQL command line
Even if you are using a GUI tool to connect to your MySQL servers, one day or another, you will have to deal with the command line. So it is nice to know a few tips that can really make your work easier. Note: The commands below are only available for Unix/Linux. Using pager Most [...]
Percona Toolkit Webinar followup Q&A
First, a thank you to everyone who attended the webinar Today, I appreciate your time and nice comments. As promised, here are answers to questions that couldn’t be answered during the talk: Q: How do you install the tools? The manual has full details, but it’s important to know that the latest release for [...]
The Optimization That (Often) Isn’t: Index Merge Intersection
Prior to version 5.0, MySQL could only use one index per table in a given query without any exceptions; folks that didn’t understand this limitation would often have tables with lots of single-column indexes on columns which commonly appeared in their WHERE clauses, and they’d wonder why the EXPLAIN plan for a given SELECT would [...]

