I often see people confuse different ways MySQL can use indexing, getting wrong ideas on what query performance they should expect. There are 3 main ways how MySQL can use the indexes for query execution, which are not mutually exclusive, in fact some queries will use indexes for all 3 purposes listed here.
When to use Hardware upgrade instead of Software Optimization
December 5, 2008 By 5 Comments
One typical question which frequently pops up is whenever it is better to use hardware upgrade or optimize software more. I already wrote about it, for example here. Today I’ll look at the same topic from the consultants view. When consultant should suggest hardware upgrade and when it is not in a simple checklist form.
Living with backups
November 6, 2008 By 28 Comments
Everyone does backups. Usually it’s some nightly batch job that just dumps all MySQL tables into a text file or ordinarily copies the binary files from the data directory to a safe location. Obviously both ways involve much more complex operations than it would seem by my last sentence, but it is not important right [...]
Real-Life Use Case for “Barracuda” InnoDB File Format
April 23, 2008 By 11 Comments
In one of his recent posts Vadim already gave some information about possible benefits from using new InnoDB file format but in this post I’d like to share some real-life example how compression in InnoDB plugin could be useful for large warehousing tasks.
Choosing innodb_buffer_pool_size
November 3, 2007 By 39 Comments
My last post about Innodb Performance Optimization got a lot of comments choosing proper innodb_buffer_pool_size and indeed I oversimplified things a bit too much, so let me write a bit better description. Innodb Buffer Pool is by far the most important option for Innodb Performance and it must be set correctly. I’ve seen a lot [...]
Heikki Tuuri Innodb answers – Part I
October 26, 2007 By 19 Comments
Its almost a month since I promised Heikki Tuuri to answer Innodb Questions. Heikki is a busy man so I got answers to only some of the questions but as people still poking me about this I decided to publish the answers I have so far. Plus we may get some interesting follow up questions [...]
FaceBook Search, Search for social networks
August 12, 2007 By 4 Comments
Yesterday I ran into the article which sheds some light on FaceBook search implementation. As we’re recently a lot into search having implemented a bunch of search projects ourselves and helped number a of customers with their full text search needs I decided to post my thoughts on this matter. First I was surprised article [...]
InnoDB vs MyISAM vs Falcon benchmarks – part 1
January 8, 2007 By 117 Comments
Several days ago MySQL AB made new storage engine Falcon available for wide auditory. We cannot miss this event and executed several benchmarks to see how Falcon performs in comparison to InnoDB and MyISAM. The second goal of benchmark was a popular myth that MyISAM is faster than InnoDB in reads, as InnoDB is transactional, [...]
SHOW INNODB STATUS walk through
July 17, 2006 By 40 Comments
Many people asked me to publish a walk through SHOW INNODB STATUS output, showing what you can learn from SHOW INNODB STATUS output and how to use this info to improve MySQL Performance. To start with basics SHOW INNODB STATUS is command which prints out a lot of internal Innodb performance counters, statistics, information about [...]
