May 18, 2013

MySQL 5.6.10 Optimizer Limitations: Index Condition Pushdown

While preparing the webinar I will deliver this Friday, I ran into a quite interesting (although not very impacting) optimizer issue: a “SELECT *” taking half the time to execute than the same “SELECT one_indexed_column” query in MySQL 5.6.10. This turned into a really nice exercise for checking the performance and inner workings of one [...]

MySQL Backup tools used by Percona Remote DBA for MySQL

As part of Percona Remote DBA for MySQL service we recognize that reliable backups are one of the most important things we can bring to the table. In my experience handling emergencies, the single worst thing that can happen is finding out you don’t have backups available when some sort of data loss or catastrophic [...]

MySQL 5.6 vs MySQL 5.5 and the Star Schema Benchmark

So far most of the benchmarks posted about MySQL 5.6 use the sysbench OLTP workload.  I wanted to test a set of queries which, unlike sysbench, utilize joins.  I also wanted an easily reproducible set of data which is more rich than the simple sysbench table.  The Star Schema Benchmark (SSB) seems ideal for this. [...]

Announcing Percona Server for MySQL version 5.1.67-14.4

Percona is glad to announce the release of Percona Server for MySQL version 5.1.67-14.4 on March 8, 2013 (Downloads are available here and from the Percona Software Repositories). Based on MySQL 5.1.67, including all the bug fixes in it, Percona Server 5.1.67-14.4 is now the current stable release in the 5.1 series. All of Percona‘s software is open-source and free, all the details [...]

InnoDB Full-text Search in MySQL 5.6: Part 2, The Queries!

This is part 2 in a 3 part series. In part 1, we took a quick look at some initial configuration of InnoDB full-text search and discovered a little bit of quirky behavior; here, we are going to run some queries and compare the result sets. Our hope is that the one of two things [...]

Investigating MySQL Replication Latency in Percona XtraDB Cluster

I was curious to check how Percona XtraDB Cluster behaves when it comes to MySQL replication latency — or better yet, call it data propagation latency. It was interesting to see whenever I can get stale data reads from other cluster nodes after write performed to some specific node. To test it I wrote quite a [...]

InnoDB Full-text Search in MySQL 5.6 (part 1)

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 [...]

CentOS 5.8 users: your UTF-8 data is in peril with Perl MySQL

CentOS 5.8 and earlier use Perl module DBD::mysql v3.0007 which has a bug that causes Perl not to flag UTF-8 data as being UTF-8.  Presuming that the MySQL table/column is using UTF-8, and the Perl MySQL connection is also using UTF-8, then a correct system returns: PV = 0x9573840 "\343\203\213 \303\250"\0 [UTF8 "\x{30cb} \x{e8}"] That’s a Devel::Peek inside a Perl scalar variable which [...]