May 24, 2013

How to debug long-running transactions in MySQL

Among the many things that can cause a “server stall” is a long-running transaction. If a transaction remains open for a very long time without committing, and has modified data, then other transactions could block and fail with a lock wait timeout. The problem is, it can be very difficult to find the offending code [...]

MySQL Limitations Part 1: Single-Threaded Replication

I recently mentioned a few of the big “non-starter” limitations Postgres has overcome for specific use cases. I decided to write a series of blog posts on MySQL’s unsolved severe limitations. I mean limitations that really hobble it for major, important needs — not in areas where it isn’t used, but in areas where it [...]

Using LoadAvg for Performance Optimization

Linux and Unixes have excellent metric of system load called “loadavg”. In fact load average is is 3 numbers which correspond to “load average” calculated for one five and 15 minutes. It is computed as exponential moving average so most recent load have more weight in the value than old one. What does Load Average [...]

How Web Services world affect LAMP Stack

In connection to my previous post I was thinking how Web 2.0 with its massive use of Web Services affect LAMP Stack ? Well actually there are serious difference both for client and server application development which you might want to take into account. If you’re developing Web Service Server application you will most likely [...]