I was interviewed recently for an article in IT World: “In The Workplace: Tips for managing different generations”.
I do see differences in how younger people adopt social networks into their working habits versus older people who may be stuck with their existing habits that work for them. On the other hand, I also think it has to do with personalities, as to whether someone finds the answers on their own, versus using social means & conversation to get to the answer.
Last year O’Reilly released the 2nd Edition of the MySQL Cookbook by Paul DuBois. You can read my review here.
Whenever a publisher releases a 2nd Edition of a book, you know it was well received the first time around. So that’s a good sign that the material has gotten people buying. I would say in the computer reference and howto market, that’s a very good indication that the material is well written and relevant. I certainly found it to be the case with this title.
If you’re looking for a quick & no nonsense howto book on MySQL development, look no further. The book focuses on Ruby, Perl, PHP, Python and Java as examples. So if you’re doing development, specifically web development, you’ll get a lot out of this title.
Nov 13
Posted by Sean Hull in high availability, migration, mysql, open-source, oreilly, replication, review | No Comments
I just finished reading the recently released 2nd Edition of High Performance MySQL by Baron Schwartz, Peter Zaitsev, Vadim Tkachenko, Jeremy Zawodny, Arjen Lentz & Derek Balling. I’ve posted a review here on Amazon.
Wow, that’s quite a list of authors, but when you look at the material, you see why. This book is a very indepth look at the MySQL server. Intended for the intermediate to advanced DBAs and developers who want to know the inner workings of the server, as well as how to use many of it’s advanced features.
For instance the chapter on replication was quite good. Given that you probably setup replication in five minutes, and are wondering weeks or months later why it’s not working, this chapter will give you some answers. Using non-deterministic functions? Mixing MyISAM and InnoDB tables in the same transactions? Seeing some errors in your slave error log that don’t make sense? After finding out that there is something wrong, you may be more surprised that your slave can be out of sync with the master, and not even let you know about it. The chapter recommends Maatkit’s mk-table-checksum as an assistant to identifying these problems.
All in all the book is superb, so take a look at the review for details, and go get yourself a copy!!
In this month’s Database Journal article we write about Replication Pitfalls with MySQL.
Replication is fairly straightforward to setup, however your slave databases can get out of sync, or throw errors. We investigate some of the reasons why, and help you identify those before they come back to bite you!
Nov 7
Posted by Sean Hull in abstract, collaborate, mysql, oracle | 3 Comments
Presentation Abstract
More and more MySQL databases are sneaking their way into the Oracle environment. If you’re being asked to
managing these new databases, you may not know where to start.
We’ll give and overview of MySQL specifically for Oracle DBAs. Since you already have the requisite conceptual
framework as an Oracle DBA, a quickstart will help you get up to speed with how things are done in the MySQL
world.
Outline
Introduction
1. Installation
2. User Management, Authentication + Privileges
3. Backup and Recovery
4. Replication Solutions Compared to DataGuard
5. Transactions, Query Optimization + Profiling
6. Views and Partitioning
7. Server Tuning and Optimization
Conclusions
Learning Objective 1
Bring Oracle DBAs up to speed with MySQL
Learning Objective 2
Feature comparison between Oracle + MySQL, what’s there, what’s not etc.
Learning Objective 3
Tuning and Profiling MySQL from an Oracle perspective.
Attendee Prerequisites
Intermediate Oracle DBA experience required.
Nov 7
Posted by Sean Hull in abstract, casestudy, collaborate, oracle | No Comments
Presentation Abstract
Technology consulting is always one part science, one part thinking on your toes, and one part client relationship.
In a recent engagement at a large educational software services company we were faced with a very challenging
problem. They were running up against a wall as their user base steadily grew. They were growing at a steady
rate, but their database systems were becoming a bottleneck to the application performance and thus the service
they offered their customers.
We looked at the technology involved to scale up based on their growth rates, but found it was becoming cost
prohibitive. They asked us how it could be done cheaper.
Stepping back from the problem, we devised a very unorthodox solution, which upon inspection may seem rather
obvious. Yet the business had been doing things a certain way for so long, they had not considered this alternate
view.
Outline
Introduction
1. Initial meetings with client, discuss problems
2. Review of database systems
3. Cost estimate based on current growth patterns.
4. Discussions with client, and further review
5. Creative problem solving to do more with less hardware.
Conclusions
Learning Objective 1
Measuring growth of database applications
Learning Objective 2
Discussing business needs, and projecting requisite technology needs and requirements.
Learning Objective 3
Balancing technology costs with business requirements, and using creative problem solving to increase
Attendee Prerequisites
Beginning DBA skills.
Basic understanding of internet platform, client, webserver, and database.
Just submitted a couple proposals for O’Reilly’s MySQL Conference in April 2009, Santa Clara, CA. Fingers crossed!
Sean Hull (hullsean@gmail.com)
Sean Hull (hullsean@gmail.com)
Drupal is an open-source CMS that has a huge user base and community. I recently managed the MySQL side of the equation for a Drupal-based website of a large television brand. There are some documents out there for high performance MySQL with Drupal, I found them lacking. So I did extensive benchmarking, and profiling of queries, to find the best overall setup.
Session type: 45 minute conference session
Topics: Business and Case Studies
Drupal is the open-source CMS du-jour. It has become very popular very quickly, but performance isn’t necessarily tip-top out of the box.
In our implementation of MySQL for a drupal-based website of a large television brand, we went down the path of doing our own benchmarking for our expected pageviews, and ares of the site we thought would get the most traffic. We benchmark the base set of modules, and our own extensions as well using apachebench, http_load, supersmack, and sql-bench. We then optimized the queries inside those modules using various MySQL profiling tools such as EXPLAIN, innotop, slow query log, and show status.
In this presentation we discuss the site, the business requirements, the benchmarking tools, profiling tools, and the final results. It provides a window into the workings of a large high-traffic internet website.
Nov 6
Posted by Sean Hull in abstract, mysql | No Comments
Just submitted a couple proposals for O’Reilly’s MySQL Conference in April 2009, Santa Clara, CA. Fingers crossed!
Sean Hull (hullsean@gmail.com)
Sean Hull (hullsean@gmail.com)
MySQL has a number of great features for managing archival data, and very large tables. We look at the MERGE storage engine first. Then we look at views which can hide many tables behind the scenes. And lastly we look at partitioned tables.
Session type: 45 minute conference session
Topics: Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence
MySQL has some very powerful features for large databases now available in 5.1.
We’ll look at the MERGE storage engine first. Then we’ll take a look at views, and the strengths and weaknesses there. And lastly we’ll consider partitioning as an option.
Each of these solutions has pros and cons. When you consider performance, ease of administration, and manageability, they all have tradeoffs.
Sean Hull (hullsean@gmail.com)
Sean Hull (hullsean@gmail.com)
MySQL Replication is powerful technology, but many things can trip you up. Sometimes the slaves get out of sync with the master, or dump errors into their logfiles. Sometimes replication just can’t keep up. In this presentation will explain how to verify with checksums, avoid traps in your code, monitor, and even help you improve the performance of your replication setup.
There are a few big gotchas with MySQL’s statement based replication. Non-deterministic functions can cause the slave to get out of sync, mixing innodb and MyISAM tables, to name just a few. What you need to do is watch for errant and incompatible SQL, and then verify that your setup is correct. Verification can be done with checksums on the tables, and comparing those against the slave copies.
We’ll discuss all this, and the tools and techniques you can use to bulletproof your own replication setup. We’ll also discuss performance tuning. If your slave is getting slowly further and further behind, there are techniques, parameters, and re-architecting that can improve its speed and performance.
Our latest newsletter Open Insights is out. Issue 49 – Things Fall Apart takes a stab a discussing the recent economic meltdown, and paralleling how all complex systems, particularly computing systems, have a tendency to fail as well.
This point is not made to be cynical. Rather it asks us to take a hard look at complicated and interconnected pieces, accept that sometimes there are things hidden in that complexity that we can’t know about, and to plan for that. Plan for trouble, monitor (ie regulate) things as best you can, but not so much that the system doesn’t function. And be as proactive as possible.
These truths probably hold for all complex relationships, whether they are financial, or complex technical systems.
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