Robin Schumacher

Just a quick note to let you know that you can download and test the new MyISAM online backup that is part of the overall new backup utility that is shipping with MySQL 6.0.  The backup is native (not logical like a mysqldump backup) and online so you should get no interruptions in activity while the backup is running and it should be faster than logical-styled backups.  Download the preview and let the backup team know what you think.  Do keep in mind this is a preview release so you may/will find bugs.  Finally, kudos to the backup team for getting this out far ahead of the original  schedule.

I’m looking forward to getting a couple of enhancements in for MySQL stored procedures - SIGNAL and RESIGNAL - which will help greatly in the area of error handling and management.  Our dev team is working on them now and is in need of some use cases that will help ensure that they hit the mark with the implementation.  Right now the plan is to have them land in the first post-6.0 release of the MySQL Server.

Please check out the worklogs for both SIGNAL and RESIGNAL and then shoot me your thoughts on how you’d use each and any advice/instructions you’d like to give our dev team as they make progress on the tasks.  Send your comments to: rschumacher@mysql.com.  Thanks for your help!

You’ve probably seen the release announcement of MySQL Workbench this week at our User Conference and I wanted to add my public congratulations to the team.  At my last company, I oversaw a product line of many database tools for Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, and others. And without question, out of the monitoring, admin, development, and other tools we produced, there was no other product that required more brainpower to produce than the modeling tool we sold (ER/Studio).  And that’s why I think the delivery of MySQL Workbench is so special - underneath the covers, there is a ton of complexity and hard work that other tools just don’t require. Modeling tools are just a different beast and the teams that build and maintain them are extreme developers - they have to be.  Mike Zinner and his team are just such developers and we’re lucky to have them.

Download and try out MySQL Workbench - you’ll find it does a lot more than just ER diagramming. Mike and his team have great rev/fwd engineering functions, sync and compare utilities and great documentation functions that you’ll love.   And, of course, be sure to let us know what you think.

Just a quick note from the MySQL User’s Conference - I hope all of you attending today will stop by and listen to a couple of talks I’m giving.  I’m first talking about building multi-TB data warehouses with some great help from the Infobright folks (10:50 in ballroom G) and then I’m going to present what you can expect from MySQL in the coming years (11:55 ballroom B).  Hope to see you there!

If you’re managing a variety of different MySQL servers, it’s hard sometimes to know if a problem you’re experiencing is being caused by a bug or if it’s a different issue altogether.  I really like what our Enterprise Tools’ team has done in the latest release of the Enterprise Monitor - they’ve now got an Upgrade Advisor that scans your MySQL server farm and tells you if a particular server needs to be upgraded with respect to critical issues (crash bugs, security, etc.)  You can schedule this to occur on a regular basis so you don’t have to remember to do it.  Nice. 

Check out Rob Young’s dev zone article for more details. 

Well, it’s that time of the year to get excited again!  Anyone involved in the MySQL world obviously knows our big User Conference is coming up April 14 – 17 in Santa Clara, and this year Jay Pipes and crew have outdone themselves again by working with our great community, customers, and partners to put together an outstanding series of sessions, tutorials, BOF’s, and more. 

As usual, it’s going to be tough to make decisions on which sessions and such to attend, so if you’re a MySQL DBA, Architect, Performance Analyst, or other MySQL sysadmin, I thought I’d try to help and point you to some sessions that I know are going to help you in your DBA job.  Rather than break it down by subject matter/discipline like I did last year, I thought I’d work through each day and try and highlight some of the sessions that I don’t think you’re going to want to miss.

Tutorial day

Those of you having or supporting applications that need the utmost in high availability will have a couple of good tutorials to choose from.  If you’re considering MySQL Cluster for your applications, then you’ll be hard-pressed to beat Stewart Smith’s Cluster tutorial .  If, however, you’re looking to get the most of MySQL’s replication capabilities, then there’s no better person to listen to than the one who oversees MySQL replication, Lars Thalmann, and his replication tutorial.

On a totally different subject, there’s always the religious debate about whether application logic should be embedded in the database or in the application layer.  Personally, I’ve seen both be successful in various scenarios.  If you’re someone who likes the idea of storing and managing such logic and code in the database, then don’t miss Mariella Di Giacomo’s stored procedure seminar. 

Tuesday

Naturally, you’ll want to attend the morning keynotes of Marten Mickos and Jonathan Schwartz to find out the latest on what’s going on with MySQL now that we’re a part of Sun.  After that, you’ve got lots to choose from depending on what areas you want to focus. 

Since backup and recovery is one of the key disciplines of any database administrator, you should look into the various sessions offered on this topic.  To see MySQL’s new backup utility in action, check out one of MySQL’s backup extraordinaire’s (Dr. Chuck Bell) session, and if you’re new to MySQL, then Kai Voigt’s talk on backup and recovery basics is a must-attend.  Finally, there’s a good-looking session from Fotolog that concentrates on practical disaster recovery.  

Data warehousing specialists will have some very interesting sessions to choose from on Tuesday.  There’s a good session on warehouse performance tuning along with strategies and techniques for building terabyte warehouses with MySQL (that includes a cool look at the Infobright storage engine) at an early session that includes yours truly (shameless plug number one).  

Rounding out Tuesday for DBA’s is a great session best practices for DBAs by Sherri Kritzer and, to keep you proactively prepared, a look into the crystal ball with respect to what’s coming in the MySQL Server and other related products with this author (shameless plug number two).

Wednesday:

Without question, the early morning keynote on scaling up or out with MySQL is a can’t miss.  After that, data warehouse folks will definitely want to check out Kickfire’s session on their new data warehouse solution that’s based on MySQL, and the VLDB session on Petabytes and MySQL.  

Those wanting to know more about the new Falcon transaction storage engine should attend Jim Starkey’s (Falcon’s “father”) session that goes into detail about Falcon, including the specific cases where Falcon really shines. Kevin Lewis (Falcon team lead) and Ann Harrison will also host a special session for those wanting to know more about how Falcon compares to InnoDB. Another good storage engine session will be Monty’s talk on the new Maria storage engine that’s essentially crash-proof MyISAM.  

Naturally, as a DBA, you’ll want to hit all the good performance tuning sessions, and Jay Pipe/Tobias Asplund never disappoint on this front.   

Thursday

More interesting performance-related sessions await you on Thursday. The Fotolog session on optimizing MySQL on Solaris should be a good talk, as will Google’s session on scaling InnoDB, and Flickr’s on scaling MySQL in write-intensive environments. An alternative to Flickr’s session would be ScienceLogic’s talk on Scaling MySQL in the same type of scenario.

And because the number one performance contributor is a proper database design, you don’t want to miss Ron Bradford’s talk on the subject.

Finally, those DBA’s supporting data warehousing apps should check out the data warehouse panel late in the day.   

Conclusion

Of course, it’s hard to craft a generic DBA schedule that fits everyone’s needs but the above should help you navigate the waters of the upcoming User Conference. The main thing is make sure you’re registered so if you haven’t done so yet, take care of that today!  See you at the show!

I’ve always been a big proponent of data modeling and using modeling tools to create physical database designs (as an aside, I’ve never been much on logical modeling), so I’m naturally happy about our upcoming MySQL Workbench tool.  During my DBA years, I basically lived in my modeling tools and used them all the time for many different purposes.  I’ve just written a new dev zone article that talks about why modeling is important for creating high-performance databases, and how you can use modeling tools for change management/control purposes and how doing this can keep you from getting burned when DB changes go bad.  Check out the article and let me know what you think.

We’re pleased to announce that the Falcon beta is now out and available.  Falcon is MySQL’s new transaction storage engine, and offers a number of nice features for those developing applications that have transactional needs.  Falcon has all the standard transactional features you’d expect (ACID compliance, MVCC, crash recovery, etc) and some other items you will likely find helpful to have (user-defined tablespaces, SQL-based diagnostics for locking, I/O, and more.)

Please download the new Falcon beta (note that the Falcon beta is in the 6.0.4 alpha binary) and let us know what bugs you find or enhancements you’d like to see - your feedback is (as always) greatly appreciated! If you’re new to Falcon, you can check out the various tech white papers, getting started guides and FAQ’s on our 6.0 info page.

In some ways, MySQL is a victim of its own success.  Because of the focus on reliability, performance, and ease-of-use, MySQL usage continues to grow at a heavy pace.  This being the case, the demand for skilled MySQL pro’s has quickly outstripped the current supply.  Go to monster and put in ‘mysql’ and you’ll get back thousands of hits. So if you’re wondering whether getting MySQL expertise as a DBA is a good investment, wonder no more.

Without a doubt, one great way to drink in lots of MySQL DBA knowledge is to attend the upcoming MySQL User’s Conference.  At this year’s conference, there are more tracks than ever designed to help the DBA get a handle on security, performance tuning, backup and recovery, high-performance schema design, and much more.  Plus, you’ll get to see some new tools we’ve been working on to make your DBA life easier, sneak-peek’s at major upcoming features like our new online backup, and some pretty cool things on the data warehousing front. I’ll see about kicking out a DBA tutorial guide for the conference once we get a little closer, but I do want to remind you that early registration savings expires near the end of the month, so sign up soon if you want to save some $$$.

As I wrote in a previous post, I’m pretty jazzed about the upcoming MySQL Workbench as I know how nice it is to have a strong modeling tool at your disposal.  I’ve just completed a new paper that discusses the many benefits that both developers and DBAs get when they use a good data modeling tool like Workbench.  If you’ve been wondering whether a modeling tool can make a difference in your worklife, download the doc and give it a read. 

 And don’t forget to check out the latest builds of Workbench as the team is working hard on getting the first GA version out.  Your help and feedback is greatly appreciated!