Month: April 2012

It’s *that time* of the year

MySQL

Even without attending the Percona Live conference in Santa Clara, you could tell something big was going on.

One way of measuring it was by looking at the flow of announcements. Here’s a brief list, and apologies if I’ve missed anyone:

All within the first days of the conference.

What this means, over the surface

I read a post by someone who was ranting about Oracle making so many announcements just as the conference began. He obviously suspected there was no coincidence. I got the impression he was looking at it the wrong way: as if Oracle’s announcements came to discourage the relevance of the conference.

I beg the opposite.

Continue reading » “It’s *that time* of the year”

common_schema talk at Percona Live

MySQL

Are you attending PerconaLive?

Allow me to suggest you attend the Common Schema: a framework for MySQL server administration session on April 12, 14:00 – 14:50 @ Ballroom F.

This talk is by none other than Roland Bouman. Roland co-authored parts of common_schema, and is a great speaker.

I have a personal interest, of course, being the author of most of the components in common_schema. I would like to convert you to a supporter of this project. I know a few very smart people who think this project is an important tool. I would like more people to get to know it. Eventually, I would like developers and DBAs alike to consider it an inseparable part of any MySQL installation.

Then I shall have world domination, Bwa ha ha!

PS,

Have fun, I will unfortunately not attend myself this year. Having been on the program committee, I can tell it’s going to be a great conference!

Thoughts on using MySQL plugins

MySQL

I’m giving thoughts on the viability of MySQL plugins. This is due to a particular experience I’ve had, which is thankfully solved. However, it left some bitter taste in my mouth.

MySQL plugins are a tricky business. To create a plugin, you must compile it against the MySQL version you wish the users to use it with. Theoretically, you should compile it against any existing MySQL version, minors as well (I’m not sure whether it may sometimes or most times work across minor versions).

But, most important, you must adapt your plugin to major versions.

Another option for plugin makers, is to actually not recompile it, but rather provide with the source code, and let the end user compile it with her own MySQL version. But here, too, the code must be compatible with whatever changes the new MySQL version may have.

And if it doesn’t compile with the new MySQL version?

That’s what happened to me. The particular case at hand was SphinxSE, a plugin which serves as a bridge between MySQL and a Sphinx Search server. I’ve been using it for years and was happy about it. But, as it happened, it took well over a year for sphinx to compile with MySQL 5,5. This meant I was unable to upgrade my 5.1 installation to 5.5, a thing I was aiming to do for quite a while. Continue reading » “Thoughts on using MySQL plugins”