Traditionally the most benchmarks are focusing on throughput. We all get used to that, and in fact in our benchmarks, sysbench and tpcc-mysql, the final result is also represents the throughput (transactions per second in sysbench; NewOrder transactions Per Minute in tpcc-mysql). However, like Mark Callaghan mentioned in comments, response time is way more important [...]
Which Linux distribution for a MySQL database server? A specific point of view.
December 8, 2011 By 38 Comments
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 [...]
kernel_mutex problem. Or double throughput with single variable
December 2, 2011 By 17 Comments
Problem with kernel_mutex in MySQL 5.1 and MySQL 5.5 is known: Bug report. In fact in MySQL 5.6 there are some fixes that suppose to provide a solution, but MySQL 5.6 yet has long way ahead before production, and it is also not clear if the problem is really fixed. Meantime the problem with kernel_mutex [...]
Sphinx 2.0.2 Beta is released, Sphinx Users Conference in December
November 17, 2011 By 6 Comments
My friends at Sphinx Technologies have finally released new beta of Sphinx – Sphinx 2.0.2. It includes about 6 months of development and includes over 30 new features and tons of bug fixes. I’m happy to see how Sphinx 2.0 is shaping up a lot of rough corners are being polished and I’m hopeful we [...]
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 [...]
The story of one MySQL Upgrade
October 8, 2010 By 8 Comments
I recently worked on upgrading MySQL from one of very early MySQL 5.0 versions to Percona Server 5.1. This was a classical upgrade scenario which can cause surprises. Master and few slaves need to be upgraded. It is a shared database used by tons of applications written by many people over more than 5 years [...]
Getting around optimizer limitations with an IN() list
January 9, 2010 By 9 Comments
There was a discussion on LinkedIn one month ago that caught my eye: Database search by “within x number of miles” radius? Anyone out there created a zipcode database and created a “search within x numer of miles” function ? Thankful for any tips you can throw my way.. J A few people commented that [...]
Upgrading MySQL
January 5, 2010 By 23 Comments
Upgrading MySQL Server is a very interesting task as you can approach it with so much different “depth”. For some this is 15 minutes job for others it is many month projects. Why is that ? Performing MySQL upgrade two things should normally worry you. It is Regressions – functionality regressions when what you’ve been [...]
Gathering queries from a server with Maatkit and tcpdump
July 1, 2009 By 23 Comments
For the last couple of months, we’ve been quietly developing a MySQL protocol parser for Maatkit. It isn’t an implementation of the protocol: it’s an observer of the protocol. This lets us gather queries from servers that don’t have a slow query log enabled, at very high time resolution. With this new functionality, it becomes [...]
KISS KISS KISS
March 1, 2009 By 7 Comments
When I visit customers quite often they tell me about number of creative techniques they heard on the conferences, read on the blogs, forums and Internet articles and they ask me if they should use them. My advice is frequently – do not. It is fun to be creative but creative solutions also means unproven [...]
