One of the more common questions I get asked is which Linux distribution I would use for a MySQL database server. Bearing the responsibility for someone else’s success means I should advise something that is stable, reliable, easy to manage and has plenty of resources available online. It should also allow running MySQL without too [...]
Which Linux distribution for a MySQL database server? A specific point of view.
December 8, 2011 By 38 Comments
Avoiding auto-increment holes on InnoDB with INSERT IGNORE
November 29, 2011 By 8 Comments
Are you using InnoDB tables on MySQL version 5.1.22 or newer? If so, you probably have gaps in your auto-increment columns. A simple INSERT IGNORE query creates gaps for every ignored insert, but this is undocumented behaviour. This documentation bug is already submitted. Firstly, we will start with a simple question. Why do we have [...]
Infinite Replication Loop
October 10, 2011 By 2 Comments
Last week I helped 2 different customers with infinite replication loops. I decided to write a blog post about these infinite loop of binary log statements in MySQL Replication. To explain what they are, how to identify them… and how to fix them.
Preprocessing Data
August 8, 2011 By 3 Comments
There are many ways of improving response times for users. There are some people that spend a lot of time, energy and money on trying to have the application respond as fast as possible at the time when the users made the request. Those people may miss out on an opportunity to do some or [...]
Flexviews – part 3 – improving query performance using materialized views
April 4, 2011 By 20 Comments
Combating “data drift” In my first post in this series, I described materialized views (MVs). An MV is essentially a cached result set at one point in time. The contents of the MV will become incorrect (out of sync) when the underlying data changes. This loss of synchronization is sometimes called drift. This is conceptually [...]
Ultimate MySQL variable and status reference list
January 8, 2011 By 4 Comments
I am constantly referring to the amazing MySQL manual, especially the option and variable reference table. But just as frequently, I want to look up blog posts on variables, or look for content in the Percona documentation or forums. So I present to you what is now my newest Firefox toolbar bookmark: an option and [...]
Data mart or data warehouse?
July 15, 2010 By 13 Comments
This is part two in my six part series on business intelligence, with a focus on OLAP analysis. Part 1 – Intro to OLAP Identifying the differences between a data warehouse and a data mart. (this post) Introduction to MDX and the kind of SQL which a ROLAP tool must generate to answer those queries. [...]
Air traffic queries in InfiniDB: early alpha
November 2, 2009 By 19 Comments
As Calpont announced availability of InfiniDB I surely couldn’t miss a chance to compare it with previously tested databases in the same environment. See my previous posts on this topic: Analyzing air traffic performance with InfoBright and MonetDB Air traffic queries in LucidDB I could not run all queries against InfiniDB and I met some [...]
Just do the math!
July 6, 2009 By 4 Comments
One of the most typical reasons for performance and scalability problems I encounter is simply failing to do the math. And these are typically bad one because it often leads to implementing architectures which are not up for job they are intended to solve. Let me start with example to make it clear. Lets say [...]
MySQL extensions for hosting
April 24, 2008 By 11 Comments
A few weeks ago I was asked to isolate some functionalities from Mark Callaghan’s MySQL patch bundle. They were extensions adding per-user and per-table accounting to the database, accessible with a new set of commands such as SHOW TABLE_STATISTICS, SHOW INDEX_STATISTICS and SHOW USER_STATISTICS. The first two can interest anyone to periodically check what data [...]
