MySQL Support Options

Oracle has released news about changing policies of MySQL Enterprise Support effectively dropping annual support for Basic and Silver. The entry level support is now $3000 per server per year. The MySQL support team now part of Oracle has great resources however Oracle is in the business of making money. When a general company question for OOW is company income, and the first option is < $50 million it highlights that startups, and smaller companies are clearly not a focus.

The success of MySQL as an open source company has lead to other leading providers that now can provide enterprise level support. More importantly many organizations over per-incident support which is more cost effect. News in the past week has included Percona - New Support Option for MySQL, and today SkySQL with Kaj Arno’s Joining SkySQL Ab, back in the startup business. (Motivation for me to publish this draft)

For reference, this is what I received from Oracle prompting this post.

For those of you using Basic and Silver support we’re being told those options will no longer be available. If you wish to continue with Basic or Silver you will need to sign a multi-year agreement and you would be able to keep using Basic or Silver for up to another 3 years.

MySQL Best Practices for DBAs and Developers

This is one of the MySQL presentations I’m doing on the OTN LAD Tour in South America, starting today in Lima, Peru.

MySQL Best Practices for DBAs and Developers

Learn the right techniques to maximize your investment in MySQL by knowing the best practices for DBAs and Developers. Understand what subtle differences between MySQL and other RDBMS products are essential to understand in order to maximize the benefits and strengths of MySQL. We will be covering areas including the minimum MySQL configuration, ideal SQL, MySQL security and schema optimizations.

  • MySQL Configuration default settings including SQL_MODE
  • Documenting, formatting and future proofing your SQL
  • Developing and reviewing all SQL paths
  • MySQL physical and user security
  • The best schema optimizations
  • Essential Monitoring and Instrumentation
  • The locking essentials for different storage engines
  • Managing your Disk I/O with optimal storage and access

MySQL 5.5 and transaction management

Announced at MySQL Sunday was the Release Candidate edition of MySQL 5.5.6. Also noted by Geert where he points out the default storage engine is now InnoDB.

However, for those from a background other then MySQL there is still a gotcha.

mysql> show global variables like 'autocommit';
+---------------+-------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+---------------+-------+
| autocommit    | ON    |
+---------------+-------+

Unlike Oracle for example, the default autocommit is on.

Doing some other boundary conditions, it is no longer possible to disable InnoDB on startup which you would of course expect.

$ bin/mysqld_safe --skip-innodb &
$ tail error.log

101003 15:33:32 [Note] Plugin 'InnoDB' is disabled.
101003 15:33:32 [ERROR] Unknown/unsupported storage engine: InnoDB
101003 15:33:32 [ERROR] Aborting

MyISAM however can’t be removed and can’t be disabled. This is a question I’ve been asked by Oracle resources.

101003 15:34:55 [ERROR] /Users/rbradfor/mysql/mysql-5.5.6-rc-osx10.5-x86_64/bin/mysqld: ambiguous option '--skip-myisam' (--skip-myisam-block-size)
101003 15:34:55 [ERROR] Parsing options for plugin 'MyISAM' failed.
101003 15:34:55 [ERROR] Failed to initialize plugins.
101003 15:34:55 [ERROR] Aborting
mysql> select table_schema, table_name from information_schema.tables where engine='myisam';
+--------------------+---------------------------+
| table_schema       | table_name                |
+--------------------+---------------------------+
| information_schema | COLUMNS                   |
| information_schema | EVENTS                    |
| information_schema | PARAMETERS                |
| information_schema | PARTITIONS                |
| information_schema | PLUGINS                   |
| information_schema | PROCESSLIST               |
| information_schema | ROUTINES                  |
| information_schema | TRIGGERS                  |
| information_schema | VIEWS                     |
| mysql              | columns_priv              |
| mysql              | db                        |
| mysql              | event                     |
| mysql              | func                      |
| mysql              | help_category             |
| mysql              | help_keyword              |
| mysql              | help_relation             |
| mysql              | help_topic                |
| mysql              | host                      |
| mysql              | ndb_binlog_index          |
| mysql              | plugin                    |
| mysql              | proc                      |
| mysql              | procs_priv                |
| mysql              | servers                   |
| mysql              | tables_priv               |
| mysql              | time_zone                 |
| mysql              | time_zone_leap_second     |
| mysql              | time_zone_name            |
| mysql              | time_zone_transition      |
| mysql              | time_zone_transition_type |
| mysql              | user                      |
+--------------------+---------------------------+
30 rows in set (0.06 sec)

Common MySQL Scalability Mistakes

This week I was one of the presenters at the first Surge Scalability Conference in Baltimore. An event that focused not just on one technology but on what essential tools, technologies and practices system architects need to know about for successfully scaling web applications.

While MySQL is an important product in many environments, it is only one component for a successful technology stack and for many organizations is one of several products that manage your data.

My presentation was on the common MySQL scalability mistakes and how to avoid them. This is a problem/solution approach and is a companion talk with Successful MySQL Scalability which describes design for successfully scalability from the ground up.