Oracle + Open Source
two worlds inexorably colliding

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!!

Recently I wanted to setup a little MySQL sandbox where I could hack away at MySQL with reckless abandon.? A sandbox is different than a test environment, it’s usually one which is very breakable.? You want to be able to break things, or rather take them completely apart and put them back together.? It’s the only way to understand all of the moving parts.

So searching google, I happened upon Giuseppe Maxia’s Replication Playground. It basically installs into an unprivileged directory, one master, and three slaves.? You can then test out various scenarios. Read his blog entry.

It is trivial to install, however I encountered some issues with MySQL 5.0, which caused me some troubles.? I sent him my feedback, and comments, and it looks like he has rereleased it as the MySQL Sandbox. Good stuff.