System News for Sun Users

Circular Replication in MySQL

2013-05-18T16:00:00+01:00

Jeremy Smyth writes, "Replication is a hot topic in MySQL 5.6, and for good reason: There are many excellent features that make it a strong well-supported feature, from the new Global Transaction Identifiers (GTIDs), to simplified replication configuration and automated failover using MySQL Utilities (now available in alpha as a separate download).

The simplest topology consists of a master server that accepts changes, and slaves that replicate those changes from the master. A common requirement is for a network to have multiple servers that accept changes and replicate to each other. This is possible by means of circular replication, where each master is also the slave of another master, in a circular fashion. However, this configuration is prone to certain problems..."

NetMotion Wireless Migrates Product from Microsoft SQL Server to MySQL

2013-05-10T16:00:00+01:00

NetMotion Wireless develops software to manage and secure wireless data deployments for organizations with mobile field workers. Founded in 2001, NetMotion Wireless is one of the fastest growing wireless and technology companies and the recipient of over 25 awards for outstanding technology. NetMotion Wireless has over 2,500 customers, including Advocate Healthcare, Comcast, and Unilever.

NetMotion Wireless had used Microsoft SQL Server with Mobility Analytics, their mobile VPN product�'s analytics module, but found it was too costly and lacked the platform and language flexibility to be a good [embedded] database. As a result, when the NetMotion Wireless product team was developing Locality, a cellular network management product, they decided to find an alternative database to use with it and with Mobility Analytics. The team compared MySQL with Microsoft SQL Server on a number of key criteria and, after finding nothing in the 'con column', decided to use MySQL...

Big Fish Selects MySQL Cluster to Serve Real-Time Web Recommendations

2013-04-30T16:00:00+01:00

With more than 2 billion games distributed to date, Big Fish, the world's largest producer of casual games, needed a solution that would enable it to maintain its leadership in the casual game sector. Using business intelligence and predictive analytics Big Fish can segment customers based on a range of demographic and behavioural indicators.

To deliver an increasingly personalized customer experience based on its intelligence and analytics, Big Fish selected MySQL Cluster Carrier Grade Edition (CGE) to power its Marketing Management Service platform. Big Fish's Marketing Management Service platform is used across all of the company's customer management systems, including customer support and the company's "Game Manager", to provide a unique customer experience to each of its millions of monthly users whenever they come in contact with Big Fish.

MySQL for Excel 1.1.1

2013-04-22T16:00:00+01:00

The MySQL Windows Experience Team has announced the release of MySQL for Excel version 1.1.1 GA, the latest addition to the MySQL Installer for Windows.

MySQL for Excel enables you to directly work with a MySQL database from within Microsoft Excel so you can easily do tasks such as:

Importing MySQL Data into Excel
Exporting Excel data directly into MySQL to a new or existing table
Editing MySQL data directly within Excel

You can download it from the official Downloads page

Driving MySQL Innovation

2013-04-22T16:00:00+01:00

Oracle's VP of MySQL Engineering Tomas Ulin delivered on Tuesday a keynote entitled "Driving MySQL Innovation for Next Generation Applications" at the Percona Live Conference.

If you haven't seen it yet, watch it here.

Tomas covers:

Oracle's Investment in MySQL
MySQL 5.6
Trends and Product Directions

He makes it very clear that Oracle:

Invests in MySQL like Never Before
Drives MySQL Innovation
Makes MySQL Better for Next Generation Web, Cloud and Big Data Applications

Enjoy the keynote!

Familiarize Yourself with MySQL Replication: On-demand Webinar Covers the Features

2013-04-22T16:00:00+01:00

The new MySQL 5.6 GA release delivers a host of new capabilities to support developers releasing new services faster, with more agility, performance and security, Mat Keep posts, noting the utility of MySQL replication, used by the largest web, mobile and social properties to horizontally scale highly-available MySQL databases across distributed clusters of low cost, commodity servers. He recommends an on-demand MySQL 5.6 replication webinar that covers those enhancements, including:

5x higher master and slave performance
Self healing replication
Replication event checksums
DevOps features

Keep concludes his post with selections from the Q&A section of the webinar.

Need More Physical Disk Space

2013-04-22T16:00:00+01:00

Ever find yourself with a large table (or two) in a database on a partition that's running out of space? And did you ever wonder how it might safely be moved to another drive? Jeremy Smyth's post on addresses that issue with some helpful suggestions. He first explains how MySQL stores data and then explores the options available, such as moving the whole data directory; moving just one database; or moving a single table. Smyth concludes his post with the caution that modern UNIX-like operating systems often have mandatory access control systems such as AppArmor, SELinux, or Extended Policy, so be sure to do your homework before moving files around.

MySQL Enterprise Edition Enables ip.access to Support Mobile Traffic Growth

2013-03-29T16:00:00+01:00

ip.access specializes in delivering full end-to-end small cell solutions for Tier 1 and Tier 2 telecom operators around the world. The company deployed MySQL, which delivered the performance & scalability required for mobile traffic growth, and the high availability and zero administrative burden, while being a cost-effective solution fulfilling their other requirements. For installations counting up to 250K small cells, MySQL Enterprise Edition is deployed on active-standby servers. The MySQL Enterprise Monitor and Query Analyzer management tools included in the MySQL Enterprise and MySQL Cluster Carrier Grade Editions enable simple and rapid performance monitoring and tuning when needed.

MySQL Connect 2013 Call for Papers

2013-03-21T16:00:00+01:00

Organizers of MySQL Connect 2013 have issued a call for papers, which extends until April 12, 2013. The event, September 21-23 in San Francisco, will include five tracks: Performance and Scalability, High Availability & Replication, Cloud & Big Data, Database Administration & DevOps, Architecture and Application Development. In his announcement of the call for papers, Bertrand Matthelié invites members of the MySQL Community to avail themselves of this opportunity to address not only long time MySQL users and highly experienced professionals but also newer and eager MySQL customers traditionally attending Oracle OpenWorld. Don�'t miss this opportunity and submit your sessions today.

Register Now for Virtual Developer Day: MySQL (March 12 and March 19)

2013-03-04T17:00:00+01:00

The first two sessions of the free Virtual Developer Day: MySQL are scheduled for May 12 and May 19, 2013. The first session is for the Americas and Canada. The March 19th session is for Europe, Middle East, Africa and Some Asian Countries (English). Cassandra Clark describes the event as a " ... one-stop shop to learn all the essential MySQL skills and the latest features in MySQL 5.6 GA. You'll also be able to ask questions of Oracle�'s MySQL engineering, support, product management, and sales consulting teams." The event has tracks for both fresh and experienced MySQL users. Reserve your place today.

Locks and Killing Sessions in Oracle SQL Developer

2013-03-02T17:00:00+01:00

Under the formidable title "Locks and Killing Sessions in Oracle SQL Developer" Jeff Smith instructs readers of his blog in how to 1) identify the activity that causes the Windows "busy" hourglass cursor to linger on their monitor screens and 2) how to "kill" the offending session. He starts on the Tools tab and selects Monitor Sessions, whose context menu allows users to initiate a trace and execute a kill. Under the Database Administration and Locks category, Smith leads readers to the Blocking Locks by User report and, from there, to the trigger pull "Kill Session." BANG! The app is all yours.

Replication Performance Improvements in MySQL 5.6

2013-03-01T17:00:00+01:00

The replication performance of MySQL 5.6 has been improved in a number of ways, Mat Keep blogs. Using MySQL replication to scale out a database across commodity nodes and as a foundation for High Availability (HA) will demonstrate performance improvements resulting from a combination of Binary Log Group Commit, multi-threaded slaves, and Optimized Row-Based Replication. Furthermore, Keep continues, higher replication performance directly translates to reduced risk of losing data in the event of a failure on the master; improved read consistency from slaves; and resource-efficient binlogs traversing the replication cluster. These improvements allow developers and DBAs to get ahead of performance demands, Keep concludes.

MySQL 5.6 Replication: New Resources for Database Scaling and HA

2013-02-20T17:00:00+01:00

MySQL 5.6 features the "largest set of enhancements to replication ever delivered in a single release," posts Mat Keep. These include 5x higher performance to improve consistency across a cluster and reduce the risks of data loss; self-healing clusters with automatic failover and recovery from outages or planned maintenance; assured data integrity with checksums implemented across the replication workflow; and DevOps automation. He also announces two new guides:

"MySQL Replication: An Introduction"

"MySQL Replication Tutorial: Configuration, Provisioning and Management"

Keep alerts users to an upcoming live webinar in March on what's new in MySQL 5.6 replication.

MySQL Workbench 5.2.46 GA Released

2013-02-20T17:00:00+01:00

The MySQL Workbench Tool is now available in version 5.2.46, Alfredo Kojima posts, adding that MySQL Utilities 1.2.0 have been included on the distro. Kojima provides a convenient link to the release notes. He includes a download link as well to MySQL Workbench, noting its availability for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. And he provides links to the documentation for both Workbench and Utilities.

Oracle Releases MySQL 5.6 to GA

2013-02-05T17:00:00+01:00

Oracle has released MySQL 5.6 to general availability, featuring the increased performance, scalability, reliability and manageability that make MySQL 5.6, the world�'s most popular open-source database. According to Oracle's press release, MySQL 5.6 improves developer agility with subquery optimizations, online Data Definition Language (DDL) operations, NoSQL access to InnoDB, new instrumentation in Performance Schema and better condition handling. A MySQL Technology Update webcast will discuss the new release on February 14 at 10:00 a.m. PST. For more details, join the MySQL Technology Update webcast on Feb 14 at 10:00 a.m. US, Pacific Time.

Getting the Most out of MySQL Enterprise Edition

2013-01-24T17:00:00+01:00

Oracle's MySQL Enterprise Edition, according to Bertrand Matthelié, includes the most comprehensive set of advanced features, management tools and technical support needed to assist in reducing the cost, risk and time to deploy and manage MySQL applications. His post includes a link to the MySQL Resource Kit, where users will learn how to boost scalability by 20x with MySQL Enterprise Scalability; automatically detect and recover from failures with MySQL Enterprise High Availability; eliminate security vulnerabilities, improve replication and optimize performance with the MySQL Enterprise Monitor; and how MySQL Enterprise Backup reduces the risk of data loss with online "Hot" backups of databases.

MySQL 5.6 Soon Available in GA

2013-01-24T17:00:00+01:00

The pending release to GA of MySQL 5.6 has a lot of people excited, according to Rob Young. The new version offers many improvements and new functionalities. Among the chief improvements are security features; improvements in the InnoDB storage engine and in the Optimizer, making for better query execution times and diagnostics. Young also cites enhanced application availability featuring Online DDL/Schema changes; better developer agility with NoSQL Access with Memchached API to InnoDB; improvements in the Replication capability, making for high performance and self-healing distributed deployments; and improved performance schema for better instrumentation. The MySQL 5.6 Release Candidate is now available for download.

18 MySQL 5.6 Troubleshooting Improvements

2013-01-17T17:00:00+01:00

In anticipation of the release to GA of MySQL 5.6 Sveta Smirnova offers a list of 18 favorite troubleshooting improvements from the perspective of the support engineer. Each is presented with a brief comment on its nature and its utility. To name but a few: EXPLAIN for UPDATE/INSERT/DELETE; new InnoDB tables in Information Schema; option to log all InnoDB deadlocks into error log file: innodb_print_all_deadlocks; persistent statistics for InnoDB tables; support of backup/restore of InnoDB Buffer Pool during restart and on demand; partial images in RBR.

Matching SQL Statements to SQL Plan Baselines

2013-01-12T17:00:00+01:00

While SQL Plan Management (SPM) is growing increasingly popular with users migrating to Oracle Database 11g, some difficulties have arisen over the issue of using SPM which does not enable the use as well of the created SQL plan baseline. Maria Colgan shows how SQL Plan Management can be made to match SQL statements to SQL plan baselines. Colgan demonstrates that it is possible to force matches of SQL statements to SQL plan baselines. In fact, Colgan writes, it is possible to issue identical SQL statements from two different schemas that resolve to the same SQL plan baseline.

Deep Dive into GTIDs and MySQL 5.6

2013-01-11T17:00:00+01:00

In identifying the virtues of Global Transaction Identifiers (GTIDs), Mat Keep notes that GTIDs make it simple to track and compare replication across a master-slave topology, which enables much simpler recovery from failures of the master and introduces great flexibility in the provisioning and on-going management of multi-tier or ring (circular) replication topologies. He provides a link to a new on-demand MySQL 5.6 GTID webinar that features a deep dive into the design and implementation of GTIDs, showing how they enable users to simplify MySQL scaling and HA. Keep also includes an abstract in his post of the Q&A portion of the webinar.

MySQL Workbench 5.2.45 GA Released to GA

2013-01-04T17:00:00+01:00

Version 5.2.45 of the MySQL Workbench GUI tool has been released to GA. This version contains the following significant updates: support for several new MySQL 5.6 features; import recordsets from CSV file for the Inserts editor in Modeling and in the SQL Editor; and improved trigger editor, along with 72 resolved bugs. MySQL Utilities 1.1.1 has been included on the distribution as well. A post by rennox includes links to downloads, binary and source packages, and documentation.

MySQL Workbench 5.2.45 GA Released to GA

2013-01-04T17:00:00+01:00

MySQL Workbench 5.2.45 GA Released to GA

2013-01-04T17:00:00+01:00

MySQL Newsletter

2012-12-29T17:00:00+01:00

This Edition's Content December 2012

News
Spotlight: MySQL for the Cloud
White Papers
Case Studies
On Demand Webcasts
Blogs

Read on for the "December Issue".

MySQL 5.6.9 Release Candidate Available: Download Now

2012-12-20T17:00:00+01:00

Responding to the feedback gathered at MySQL Connect in September, the MySQL Team has produced MySQL 5.6.9, which is now available for download, Rob Young reports. He writes that MySQL 5.6 is designed to meet the agility demands of the next generation of web apps and services and includes across the board improvements to the Optimizer, InnoDB performance/scale and online DDL operations, self-healing Replication, Performance Schema Instrumentation, Security and developer enabling NoSQL functionality.

NoSQL Now Interfaces Directly to the InnoDB and MySQL Cluster (NDB) Storage Engines

2012-12-20T17:00:00+01:00

MySQL has implemented NoSQL interfaces directly to the InnoDB and MySQL Cluster (NDB) storage engines, Mat Keep reports, enabling users to bypass the SQL layer completely. Now Key-Value data can be written directly to MySQL tables up to 9x faster, while maintaining ACID guarantees. Users can continue to run complex queries with SQL across the same data set, providing real-time analytics to the business or anonymizing sensitive data before loading to big data platforms, while still maintaining all of the advantages of their existing relational database infrastructure. Keep provides a link to "Guide to MySQL and NoSQL: Delivering the Best of Both Worlds."

MySQL Resource Kit Explains the Pre-eminent Cloud Database

2012-12-14T17:00:00+01:00

The market for tools to exploit new cloud options grows daily. Bertrand Matthelie recommends MySQL as the ideal database choice for the cloud. He provides a link to the MySQL Resource Kit, where users can register for access to white papers, webinars, case studies and other resources. The link also explains how ISVs rely on MySQL to power their SaaS offerings and offers best practices to deploy the world�'s most popular open source database in public and private clouds. Information is included as well on how to leverage MySQL, together with Hadoop and other technologies, to unlock the value of Big Data.

Importing Data from a MySQL Database to Excel using MySQL for Excel

2012-12-13T17:00:00+01:00

There are several standard methods for importing data from a MySQL database to an Excel spreadsheet, Javier Treviño observes but all of them involve some degree of technical knowledge and require the repetition of several steps each time data needs to be imported from a MySQL table to an Excel spreadsheet. He proposes a method that employs MySQL for Excel as an easier alternative. MySQL for Excel, he notes, features an Import MySQL Data action that allows users to import data from a MySQL Table, View or use Stored Procedures literally with a few clicks within Excel.

Top 5 Developer-Enabling Nuggets in MySQL 5.6

2012-12-10T17:00:00+01:00

There are five so-called developer-friendly nuggets to be found in the forthcoming MySQL 5.6 which Rob Young reviews in a recent post. The buzz on MySQL 5.6 has principally concerned its mass appeal, advanced topics like performance/scale, high availability, and self-healing replication clusters, but Young feels that the five features he blogs about deserve attention as well. They are:

Subquery Optimizations
Online DDL Operations
Key-value access to InnoDB via Memcached API
New Instrumentation in Performance Schema
Better Condition Handling

Young discusses each in brief.

'MySQL and Hadoop: Guide to Big Data Integration'

2012-12-06T17:00:00+01:00

"MySQL and Hadoop: Guide to Big Data Integration" is a new publication announced by Mat Keep, who explains the powerful combination of the two solutions as a tool for big data analysis. The guide covers three aspects of the subject, explaining how users can unlock the value of big data with technologies that enable seamless, high performance integration between MySQL and the Hadoop platform, discussing:

The lifecycle of Big Data, from acquisition through loading, analysis and delivering operational insight - Tools and technologies to integrate MySQL with Hadoop
Best practices in data analysis