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 5.5 and MySQL 5.6 default variable values differences
As the part of analyzing surprising MySQL 5.5 vs MySQL 5.6 performance results I’ve been looking at changes to default variable values. To do that I’ve loaded the values from MySQL 5.5.30 and MySQL 5.6.10 to the different tables and ran the query:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 | mysql [localhost] {msandbox} (test) > select var55.variable_name,left(var55.variable_value,40) value55, left(var56.variable_value,40) var56 from var55 left join var56 on var55.variable_name=var56.variable_name where var55.variable_value!=var56.variable_value; +---------------------------------------------------+------------------------------------------+------------------------------------------+ | variable_name | value55 | var56 | +---------------------------------------------------+------------------------------------------+------------------------------------------+ | PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA | OFF | ON | | PID_FILE | /mnt/data/sandboxes/msb_5_5_30/data/mysq | /mnt/data/sandboxes/msb_5_6_10/data/mysq | | CHARACTER_SETS_DIR | /mnt/nfs/dist/mysql-5.5.30-linux2.6-x86_ | /mnt/nfs/dist/mysql-5.6.10-linux-glibc2. | | PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA_MAX_COND_INSTANCES | 1000 | 836 | | PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA_MAX_MUTEX_INSTANCES | 1000000 | 3282 | | OLD_PASSWORDS | OFF | 0 | | INNODB_STATS_ON_METADATA | ON | OFF | | PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA_EVENTS_WAITS_HISTORY_SIZE | 10 | 5 | | PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA_EVENTS_WAITS_HISTORY_LONG_SIZE | 10000 | 100 | | PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA_MAX_RWLOCK_INSTANCES | 1000000 | 1724 | | PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA_MAX_TABLE_HANDLES | 100000 | 2223 | | INNODB_LOG_FILE_SIZE | 5242880 | 50331648 | | BASEDIR | /mnt/nfs/dist/5.5.30 | /mnt/nfs/dist/5.6.10 | | BACK_LOG | 50 | 80 | | OPEN_FILES_LIMIT | 1024 | 5000 | | INNODB_AUTOEXTEND_INCREMENT | 8 | 64 | | MAX_CONNECT_ERRORS | 10 | 100 | | SORT_BUFFER_SIZE | 2097152 | 262144 | | LC_MESSAGES_DIR | /mnt/nfs/dist/mysql-5.5.30-linux2.6-x86_ | /mnt/nfs/dist/mysql-5.6.10-linux-glibc2. | | MAX_ALLOWED_PACKET | 1048576 | 4194304 | | JOIN_BUFFER_SIZE | 131072 | 262144 | | TMPDIR | /mnt/data/sandboxes/msb_5_5_30/tmp | /mnt/data/sandboxes/msb_5_6_10/tmp | | TABLE_OPEN_CACHE | 400 | 2000 | | INNODB_VERSION | 5.5.30 | 1.2.10 | | INNODB_BUFFER_POOL_INSTANCES | 1 | 8 | | QUERY_CACHE_SIZE | 0 | 1048576 | | SLOW_QUERY_LOG_FILE | /mnt/data/sandboxes/msb_5_5_30/data/dpe0 | /mnt/data/sandboxes/msb_5_6_10/data/dpe0 | | TABLE_DEFINITION_CACHE | 400 | 1400 | | PORT | 5530 | 5610 | | QUERY_CACHE_TYPE | ON | OFF | | REPORT_PORT | 5530 | 5610 | | PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA_MAX_FILE_INSTANCES | 10000 | 1556 | | SQL_MODE | | NO_ENGINE_SUBSTITUTION | | INNODB_OLD_BLOCKS_TIME | 0 | 1000 | | LOG_ERROR | /mnt/data/sandboxes/msb_5_5_30/data/msan | /mnt/data/sandboxes/msb_5_6_10/data/msan | | VERSION_COMPILE_OS | linux2.6 | linux-glibc2.5 | | THREAD_CACHE_SIZE | 0 | 9 | | PLUGIN_DIR | /mnt/nfs/dist/5.5.30/lib/plugin/ | /mnt/nfs/dist/5.6.10/lib/plugin/ | | SYNC_RELAY_LOG | 0 | 10000 | | GENERAL_LOG_FILE | /mnt/data/sandboxes/msb_5_5_30/data/dpe0 | /mnt/data/sandboxes/msb_5_6_10/data/dpe0 | | PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA_MAX_TABLE_INSTANCES | 50000 | 445 | | SYNC_RELAY_LOG_INFO | 0 | 10000 | | SLAVE_LOAD_TMPDIR | /mnt/data/sandboxes/msb_5_5_30/tmp | /mnt/data/sandboxes/msb_5_6_10/tmp | | SECURE_AUTH | OFF | ON | | VERSION | 5.5.30 | 5.6.10 | | INNODB_CONCURRENCY_TICKETS | 500 | 5000 | | INNODB_PURGE_THREADS | 0 | 1 | | INNODB_OPEN_FILES | 300 | 2000 | | INNODB_DATA_FILE_PATH | ibdata1:10M:autoextend | ibdata1:12M:autoextend | | INNODB_PURGE_BATCH_SIZE | 20 | 300 | | PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA_MAX_THREAD_INSTANCES | 1000 | 224 | | SOCKET | /tmp/mysql_sandbox5530.sock | /tmp/mysql_sandbox5610.sock | | INNODB_FILE_PER_TABLE | OFF | ON | | SYNC_MASTER_INFO | 0 | 10000 | | DATADIR | /mnt/data/sandboxes/msb_5_5_30/data/ | /mnt/data/sandboxes/msb_5_6_10/data/ | | OPTIMIZER_SWITCH | index_merge=on,index_merge_union=on,inde | index_merge=on,index_merge_union=on,inde | +---------------------------------------------------+------------------------------------------+------------------------------------------+ 56 rows in set (0.05 sec) |
Lets go over to see what are the most important changes [...]
The Optimization That (Often) Isn’t: Index Merge Intersection
Prior to version 5.0, MySQL could only use one index per table in a given query without any exceptions; folks that didn’t understand this limitation would often have tables with lots of single-column indexes on columns which commonly appeared in their WHERE clauses, and they’d wonder why the EXPLAIN plan for a given SELECT would [...]
MySQL Indexing Best Practices: Webinar Questions Followup
I had a lot of questions on my MySQL Indexing: Best Practices Webinar (both recording and slides are available now) We had lots of questions. I did not have time to answer some and others are better answered in writing anyway. Q: One developer on our team wants to replace longish (25-30) indexed varchars with [...]
Percona XtraDB Cluster: Failure Scenarios with only 2 nodes
During the design period of a new cluster, it is always advised to have at least 3 nodes (this is the case with PXC but it’s also the same with PRM). But why and what are the risks ? The goal of having more than 2 nodes, in fact an odd number is recommended in [...]
A case for MariaDB’s Hash Joins
MariaDB 5.3/5.5 has introduced a new join type “Hash Joins” which is an implementation of a Classic Block-based Hash Join Algorithm. In this post we will see what the Hash Join is, how it works and for what types of queries would it be the right choice. I will show the results of executing benchmarks [...]
Join Optimizations in MySQL 5.6 and MariaDB 5.5
This is the third blog post in the series of blog posts leading up to the talk comparing the optimizer enhancements in MySQL 5.6 and MariaDB 5.5. This blog post is targeted at the join related optimizations introduced in the optimizer. These optimizations are available in both MySQL 5.6 and MariaDB 5.5, and MariaDB 5.5 [...]
Multi Range Read (MRR) in MySQL 5.6 and MariaDB 5.5
This is the second blog post in the series of blog posts leading up to the talk comparing the optimizer enhancements in MySQL 5.6 and MariaDB 5.5. This blog post is aimed at the optimizer enhancement Multi Range Read (MRR). Its available in both MySQL 5.6 and MariaDB 5.5 Now let’s take a look at [...]
Index Condition Pushdown in MySQL 5.6 and MariaDB 5.5 and its performance impact
I have been working with Peter in preparation for the talk comparing the optimizer enhancements in MySQL 5.6 and MariaDB 5.5. We are taking a look at and benchmarking optimizer enhancements one by one. So in the same way this blog post is aimed at a new optimizer enhancement Index Condition Pushdown (ICP). Its available [...]
Using any general purpose computer as a special purpose SIMD computer
Often times, from a computing perspective, one must run a function on a large amount of input. Often times, the same function must be run on many pieces of input, and this is a very expensive process unless the work can be done in parallel. Shard-Query introduces set based processing, which on the surface appears [...]

