Opinions, Expertise, Passion.

There is a Linked In group I created some time ago but forgot to advertise that is for MySQL Speakers and Presenters.

If you a speaker or presenter of MySQL content, confirm your registration here.
You will need to have a reference to a website confirming you have been a speaker at a MySQL Event such as a User Conference, MySQL Camp or Local MySQL Users Group.

Hopefully overtime we can build a consolidated index at MySQL Forge Presently some pages exist including MySQL Conference & Expo and User Group Presentations but I’m accepting input for a model to have a central page, and link to or upload of presentation. Any input welcome.

Better late then never, this week I finally have the chance to catch up on some overdue posts. At the first MySQL Camp I made a list of memorable Quotes, see Day 1, Day 2, Day 3. I didn’t get as much chance as last time, however here are some pearls of the recent MySQL Camp II.

“I walked in of the street for the free food. I’m here for the free education” - Adrian.

“I’m his boss, I’m here to make sure he’s really here, and not playing hooky.”

“Mashups, collating the worse bugs from multiple API’s all in one place” - OSCON badge

“Compiles 114,000 combinations of MySQL that we are interested in.” Sandro - Skoll Project — You mean to say there are are combinations your not interested in.

“Ok, people this is the second site were are going to crash today. You have heard you have been slash dotted, now you have been camped.”

Jay turning down the lights, to the whole auditorm, not just the stage. “That won’t work. My paper isn’t backlit.” — Andrew

Jeremy: “It’s a porn site.”
Sheeri: “technocation.com it’s not a porn site, I work for a porn site.”

Jeremy: “You don’t realize how many Google properties you use, google reader was down, google search was down, google maps was down.”
Sheeri: “I had to use Yahoo maps, I feel so dirty.”

Jay: “How many people are interested in a tour of the MySQL Source Code.”
Jeremy II: “It is a guided tour, isn’t it.”

“I can’t remember if was the cold, hot or luke warm”. — Bob, In the backup talk.

“How many environments have it. They all have the presumption of it.”

The Taso Dump

I’ve gotto go, my time has come. (maintenance window needed)
Could not get a lock. (table lock)
I needed a blocker to ensure a single thread. (–single-transaction)

Finally, got a lock. (–lock-tables)
Need to ensure no transactions lost.
Dump, Dump, Dump. (mysqldump)

I’m having flow problems.
Was the buffer to small? (key_buffer_size)
Was it the query cache? (query_cache)
My Dirty Pages may be too high? (innodb_max_dirty_pages_pct)
Or was it just Too Many Connections? (max_connections)
But it was just waiting on the flush (flush tables with read lock)

Time passes, Time Passes. No output yet.
Is it network saturation?
Is it IO bound?
Do I need a better flushing method (innodb_flush_method)
No, it was just the lag? (Seconds_behind_master)

Dump is complete (unlock tables)
Now it’s time to Purge (purge logs)

If there is an attempt to restore.
The backup would be empty.
Blackhole would be found as the cause.
In the end, all transactions lost!

If you weren’t at Friday dinner after MySQL Camp II you missed it.
It’s not meant to be MySQL grammar correct, it’s just some random words we were throwing around.

MySQL Camp II is complete. A small group of about 18 had post dinner at Tiny Thai in New York City. Some elected to drive from Brooklyn, they arrived at least 30 minutes after those of us that the subway.

I have a lot of notes to write, if ever the time permits. For now, the following few that joined for drinks are below. I know other people took photos of the camp, for a change I actually took none. If you want to add a link in comments of photos from the camp that would be great.

Other sizes here

We have started MySQL Camp II. The first session is Introductions.

I didn’t catch all the employers, but here is part of the list of attendees at the Introduction section. Great to see multiple people from many places including ESPN, priceline.com, Proven Scaling, Solid Tech - sponsors of Dorsal Source, ForSaleByOwner. fontshop.com, 9Mmedia, CafeMom, JP Morgan, Upoc, ClubMom, Stock Photo Finder, AmieStreet,LogicWorks, Skoll - Distributed Continuous QA , AOL, Minggl, Minggl New Test Site, Visibone. Others include OnlineBuddies.com, NT Snort User Group, DreamweaverNY User Group, A law firm. As well as a few people from MySQL.

Many people mentioned having an Oracle background, or working with Oracle now, at least 6 people that heard me speak at “MySQL DBABootcamp for the Oracle DBA” last week.

There were a lot of MySQL Beginners here which was really great.

And now we are onto the discussion of the sessions.

Well readers, your either here or your not. MySQL Camp II starts today in Brooklyn, New York, at Polytechnic University. Last night’s pre drinks meetup in NYC went well, but today it’s brass tacks time. View Larger Map

For those of you not able to make it, IRC@Freenode #mysql-camp will be the place to hang out to hear what’s happening. If your not at the camp, please identify yourself. Be sure to also check out the Camp Web Site MySQL Camp II for the plans for today and tomorrow.

For those of you not here, MySQL Camp III is already in planning.

For those that attended the MySQL Camp at Google HQ late last year you may have seen me with my own T-Shirt designs. A number of people inquired about getting them. I’ve finally got around to make them available online, so anybody that would like one can order online.

There are two different shirts. If you want your name on the shirt, you need to make sure you choose the correct one.

• Early Adopters - For those that were the first 48 that signed up, your name as well as position and company are on the shirt.
• The Herd - For everybody that registered on the website, your name is on the shirt.

Ok. I’ve already been asked why 48. This was the number of registrants when I got the shirt made back in Australia a week or so before the Camp.

There are also plenty more of my MySQL designs at my MySQL Wear Store.

For those that also liked the runner up pin “A mouse is a waste of a perfectly good hand”, you can also get this in it’s original graphical shirt design at Geek Cool - CLI”

I started this post a month ago, but after Kaj’s discussion on the same topic at the MySQL Camp I figured it was time to post.

I had dinner with a friend recently (a very smart friend), and our conversation lead him to ask “What’s different with MySQL?”. One of the things I tried to describe was the “Pluggable Storage Engine Architecture” (PSE) potential for the future that I expect will set MySQL apart from all other Open Source and even commercial databases.

Here are some details of the example I tried to provide, given somebody who understands enough of the general principles of RDBMS’s.

Consider the ability that information (intelligent data) is available within a Relational Database via the appropriate tools and language (e.g. SQL) but it is not physically constrained to Tables, Columns and Rows of data and an application to manage that data which is the present traditional approach. Let’s use images that you take with your digital camera as an example.

In a typical RDBMS application you would create an application to managed the content of your data, with a number of tables, and links to the images etc. Of course you would need an application as well to both view and manage this information.

What if, you simply pointed your database to a directory of images and then was able to query information such as photos by date, or by size, by album, from a certain location, with given keyword etc. Most of this information about digital photographs is already there. This information is encoded into an Exif format that is embedded within JPEG images.

So what’s missing from this information? Tags and Comments are the most obvious, because this information can’t be determined electronically, this is something that humans do. If you could also embedded this information into an image with a suitable tool then you could be ready to manage your photos.

A further extension would be to have Image Analysis capabilities that enabled you to search for photos that contained the sky, or people, or something that was the color red.

What if in the future, your camera’s had a built in GPS and this information recorded within Exif, and then the ability to extend your output to link to popular on line mapping software such as Google Maps would exist. You could then use your digital camera to track your moves, taking photos that could then plot your path over a holiday, and also enabling location based queries.

It was interesting to postulate what ideas may be possible in the futre. I suspect that it won’t be long before we actually see this. So what are the other potentials that you may not consider. Another example may be a MP3 Dukebox style PSE, managing all the information held with ID tags of MP3 allowing you to do with music what could be done with images.

References

• MySQL 5.1 Manual - 14.1.2. Pluggable Storage Engine Architecture
• MySQL 5.0’s Pluggable Storage Engine Architecture, Part 1: An Overview
• White Paper MySQL 5.0’s Pluggable Storage Engine Architecture
• MySQL 5.0’s Pluggable Storage Engine Architecture Webinar

Exif Example

Here is some example content of Exif using EXIF Tool

 ./exiftool ~/Desktop/2006_02_23_AirShow/IMG_5966.JPG
ExifTool Version Number         : 6.50
File Name                       : IMG_5966.JPG
Directory                       : /home/rbradfor/Desktop/2006_02_23_AirShow
File Size                       : 2 MB
File Modification Date/Time     : 2006:09:24 17:44:32
File Type                       : JPEG
MIME Type                       : image/jpeg
Make                            : Canon
Camera Model Name               : Canon EOS 300D DIGITAL
Orientation                     : Horizontal (normal)
X Resolution                    : 180
Y Resolution                    : 180
Resolution Unit                 : inches
Modify Date                     : 2006:02:23 16:01:56
Y Cb Cr Positioning             : Centered
Exposure Time                   : 1/320
F Number                        : 10.0
ISO                             : 200
Exif Version                    : 0221
Date/Time Original              : 2006:02:23 16:01:56
Create Date                     : 2006:02:23 16:01:56
Components Configuration        : YCbCr
Compressed Bits Per Pixel       : 3
Shutter Speed Value             : 1/320
Aperture Value                  : 10.0
Max Aperture Value              : 3.5
Flash                           : No Flash
Focal Length                    : 18.0mm
Macro Mode                      : Unknown (0)
Self-timer                      : 0
Quality                         : Fine
Canon Flash Mode                : Off
Continuous Drive                : Single
Focus Mode                      : AI Focus AF
Canon Image Size                : Large
Easy Mode                       : Manual
Digital Zoom                    : Unknown (-1)
Contrast                        : +1
Saturation                      : +1
Sharpness                       : +1
Camera ISO                      : n/a
Metering Mode                   : Evaluative
Focus Range                     : Not Known
AF Point                        : Manual AF point selection
Canon Exposure Mode             : Program AE
Lens Type                       : Unknown (-1)
Long Focal                      : 55
Short Focal                     : 18
Focal Units                     : 1
Max Aperture                    : 3.6
Min Aperture                    : 22
Flash Activity                  : 0
Flash Bits                      : (none)
Zoom Source Width               : 3072
Zoom Target Width               : 3072
Color Tone                      : Normal
Focal Plane X Size              : 23.22mm
Focal Plane Y Size              : 15.49mm
Auto ISO                        : 100
Base ISO                        : 200
Measured EV                     : 9.00
Target Aperture                 : 10
Target Exposure Time            : 1/318
Exposure Compensation           : 0
White Balance                   : Auto
Slow Shutter                    : None
Shot Number In Continuous Burst : 0
Flash Guide Number              : 0
Flash Exposure Compensation     : 0
Auto Exposure Bracketing        : Off
AEB Bracket Value               : 0
Focus Distance Upper            : -0.01
Focus Distance Lower            : 5.46
Bulb Duration                   : 0
Camera Type                     : EOS Mid-range
Auto Rotate                     : None
ND Filter                       : Unknown (-1)
Self-timer 2                    : 0
Bracket Mode                    : Off
Bracket Value                   : 0
Bracket Shot Number             : 0
Canon Image Type                : IMG:EOS 300D DIGITAL JPEG
Canon Firmware Version          : Firmware Version 1.1.1
Camera Body No.                 : 0930402471
Serial Number Format            : Format 1
File Number                     : 159-5966
Owner's Name                    :
Canon Model ID                  : EOS Digital Rebel / 300D / Kiss Digital
Canon File Length               : 2387078
WB RGGB Levels Auto             : 1726 832 831 948
WB RGGB Levels Daylight         : 0 0 0 0
WB RGGB Levels Shade            : 0 0 0 0
WB RGGB Levels Cloudy           : 0 0 0 0
WB RGGB Levels Tungsten         : 0 0 0 0
WB RGGB Levels Fluorescent      : 0 0 0 0
WB RGGB Levels Flash            : 0 0 0 0
WB RGGB Levels Custom           : 0 0 0 0
WB RGGB Levels Kelvin           : 0 0 0 0
Color Temperature               : 5200
Num AF Points                   : 7
Canon Image Width               : 3072
Canon Image Height              : 2048
Canon Image Width As Shot       : 3072
Canon Image Height As Shot      : 2048
AF Points Used                  : Mid-left
Preview Quality                 : Normal
Preview Image Length            : 278318
Preview Image Width             : 1536
Preview Image Height            : 1024
Preview Image Start             : 2108760
Preview Focal Plane X Resolution: 3443.9
Preview Focal Plane Y Resolution: 3442.0
User Comment                    :
Flashpix Version                : 0100
Color Space                     : sRGB
Exif Image Width                : 3072
Exif Image Length               : 2048
Interoperability Index          : R98 - DCF basic file (sRGB)
Interoperability Version        : 0100
Related Image Width             : 3072
Related Image Length            : 2048
Focal Plane X Resolution        : 3443.946
Focal Plane Y Resolution        : 3442.017
Focal Plane Resolution Unit     : inches
Sensing Method                  : One-chip color area
File Source                     : Digital Camera
Custom Rendered                 : Normal
Exposure Mode                   : Auto
Scene Capture Type              : Standard
Compression                     : JPEG (old-style)
Thumbnail Offset                : 2560
Thumbnail Length                : 7680
Image Width                     : 3072
Image Height                    : 2048
Aperture                        : 10.0
Drive Mode                      : Single-frame shooting
Flash                           : Off
Image Size                      : 3072x2048
Lens                            : 18.0 - 55.0mm
Preview Image                   : (Binary data 278318 bytes, use -b option to extract)
Preview Image Size              : 1536x1024
Scale Factor To 35mm Equivalent : 1.6
Shooting Mode                   : Program AE
Shutter Speed                   : 1/320
Thumbnail Image                 : (Binary data 7680 bytes, use -b option to extract)
WB RGGB Levels                  : 1726 832 831 948
Blue Balance                    : 1.140108
Circle Of Confusion             : 0.019 mm
Focal Length                    : 18.0mm (35mm equivalent: 27.9mm)
Hyperfocal Distance             : 1.67 m
LV                              : 14.0
Lens                            : 18.0 - 55.0mm (35mm equivalent: 27.9 - 85.3mm)
Red Balance                     : 2.075767

It seems, people are clammering for a more consolidated help guide for SQL Performance tips.

Jay Pipes at the MySQL Camp ran a session Interactive Top 10 SQL performance Tips. There was plenty of input and discussion, and at the time Sheeri simply typed them into a wiki page for later work.

Well it seems even that rough list is popular at Del.icio.us ranking near the top of the Hot List on the front page. I saw it earlier and it was second or third, but didn’t think of taking a screen shot until now, but it’s still high.

I’d say that we could easily get the Top 10 for up to 10 different categories rather easily. Good luck Jay.

At our MySQL Camp Jay and Brian pitted off in the Umbrella Joust. Not sure if there was a winner, or a looser, but in the end no blood was split (except Leslie, but that’s another story).

See these and more camp photos at Flickr.

Some early notes by Brian Aker on Falcon as discussed at the MySQL Camp.

Falcon is a transactional engine MySQL will be introducing. The first discussions were held about 3 years ago with Ann Harrison and about 1 1/2 years ago, MySQL started taking seriously the possibilities.

Falcon is not an InnoDB replacement. It’s a different way of looking at the problem of how it looks at and manages transactions, and how it’s designed. It flips around the way data is stored. Some points:

• It uses as much memory as possible, like Oracle SGA or InnoDB pool.
• It has a row cache not a page cache for more optimal memory use.
• No locking at all. Jim doesn’t believe in it for concurrency control. It has total versioning.
• Falcon has to keep all changes in memory, so not great for user transactions that may take longer
• Characteristics - Well optimised for short fast web transactions, Designed for environments with lots of memory.

In general discussions is was mentioned from the floor the fear that there will be so many storage engine options, and you will need a matrix for what is good for what.

In conclusion, Brian mentioned it will be alpha before the end of year.

Monty gave us a quick overview of next generation of MyISAM. It is set to include:

• New data disk format
• Transaction support
• multi-versioning
• row level locking and escalation to table level locks. (interesting)
• bitmap indexes and new table scanning optimizing indexes with up to 1000x times performance.

No details of time frame were given for delivery, however development is well underway.

What the?

Well this is the inheritance diagram of the Item Class in the MySQL 5.1 Source tree, nicely documented using the Doxygen tool as mentioned by Jay in his presentation at MySQL Camp.

Jay started the Community Doxygen Project on the Forge to improve the level of commenting enabling a better platform for the community to contribute MySQL server code changes.

At this early stage David Shrewsbury is working on fine tuning initial documentation examples for QA and review. You can check out the Status Page of automated commenting conversion.

You can see the present documentation of MySQL 5.1 source here.

So, mid morning especially after having a heavy and late night drinking with new friends in Palo Alto I was seeking at Day #3 of the MySQL Camp a high-caffeine pick me up drink. Yesterday I had a Bawls, and after enjoying it I was a little concerned that when I returned to New York I would not be able to buy it. You can get it at Think Geek but that’s more complicated then a local supermarket.

So after getting a Googler to get me to the cafe fridge we find out that there weren’t any there. No problem, lets just go this way I’m told. So we start a quick tour of the larger cafe area and another set of fridges but no Bawls, we keep walking, no more again. At this time the recommendation is I should try a Rockstar, but so far no luck either. Then we head into another area (all in the same building) to a micro kitchen, no Bawls and no Rockstar, but man, it’s an entire kitchen, with like 15+ cereals alone on tap for reference. My host is now committed for me to find and try his recommendation of a RockStar. Off now, still in the same building upstairs. At this time I’m blown away. The first desk I actually walk past has a Dell 24″ Widescreen LCD monitor, of which I have one, See my comments here. One blink later to then see a desk in the next area with two side by side in vertical mode. Blink again, and in this area there are four desks, and each desk has twin Dell 24″ Widescreen LCD monitors. They were everywhere I looked. WOW!!!!

So at the next micro kitchen we finally achieve our objective. A Rockstar. Sometimes the journey is just as rewarding as the prize. In this case I got a quick and very amazing tour of just a small part of one building.

Some details about the Rockstar. Firstly not bad, certainly was a pick me up, and it didn’t take long to kick in. And when I looked at the Supplement Facts on the can. % Daily Value = 130%. So this is today’s total intake plus 1/3 of tomorrows. Oops! Breakfast, morning tea, and now Indian for lunch! (Update. I’m a dick, hence the need for the drink originally as beer killed too many brain cells. As pointed out it’s a value of 130 for calories and blank for % daily value.)

I was also told that Googlers can get addicted to the high energy drinks here. Yes, I’m certain that is true.

Early on Sunday Day #3, I dragged a few willing participants out for a “different photo” based on the umbrellas in each Lobby. It worked out well. Special thanks to Kynan who ran around to other lobby’s to find additional umbrellas. (He is the one holding the white one, and yes, that’s a utility Kilt).

I’ll be uploading more in this series to My Flickr Photos MySQL Camp 01 soon.

You can get a larger copy of image Here.