Tag: Opinions

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”

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”

MySQL command line vs. visual editors – reflections

MySQL

My previous post drew some attention, and in particular two comments I wish to relate to. I also wish to make a more fine-grained observation on visual editors.

One comment is by Peter Laursen, who rejected the generalization in my post, and another by wlad, who was harsher (but to the point), suggesting my post translated to “I don’t know it, therefore it sucks”.

I must have delivered the wrong message, since apparently people read my post as “don’t use visual editors, they are bad for you”, which is not what I intended to say, nor is it what I actually think. I took a very specific aspect of visual editors and commented on that. My comment should not extrapolate to “anything about visual editors is bad”.

I don’t think people should only be using the command line, and am not in the least interested in vi/emacs/eclipse/netbeans kind of wars. Of course everyone should be using whatever works best for them in terms of productivity and ease of use. And of course visual editors have great advantages over command line.

Continue reading » “MySQL command line vs. visual editors – reflections”

MySQL command line vs. visual editors

MySQL

Students in my training classes usually prefer to use some kind of visual editor for MySQL. Typically this would be the software they’re using at work. Sometimes they just bring over their laptops with the software installed. Or they would use MySQL Workbench, which is what I usually have pre-installed on their desktops.

I see MySQL Workbench, SQLyog, Toad for MySQL, or several more.

I always humbly suggest they close down their software and open up a command line.

It isn’t fancy. It may not even be convenient (especially on Windows, in my opinion). And repeating your last command with a minor modification requires a lot of key stroking. Or you would copy+paste from some text editor. Most students will give it a shot, then go back to their favorite editor.

Well, again and again I reach the same conclusion:

Visual editors are not as trustworthy as the command line.

Time and again students show me something on their editor. Behavior seems strange to me. Opening up a console shows a completely different picture.

Things like: Continue reading » “MySQL command line vs. visual editors”

Speaking at “August Penguin 2011”

MySQL

I will be speaking at August Penguin 2011 (אוגוסט פינגווין), on August 12th in Ramat-Gan, Israel.

August Penguin is the annual meeting of Hamakor society: an Israeli society for Free Software and Open-Source Code (read more here).

I’ll be holding a non-technical talk about MySQL, titled “MySQL and the Open Source Sphere”. In this talk I will be presenting my impressions of the nature of open source development of MySQL and surroundings: the core server, the various forks, patches, 3rd party tools, companies involved, etc. So this is a general “get to know who’s who & what’s what in the MySQL world”.

This is a 30 minutes talk. I will surely not cover every open source development in this field, so my apologies in advance to those I leave out. The truth is, there’s so much going on lately I can hardly keep up with reading the announcements. Truly, this is a wonderful time for open source development with MySQL.

Talk will be held in Hebrew.

See you there!

Thoughts and ideas for Online Schema Change

Development MySQL

Here’s a few thoughts on current status and further possibilities for Facebook’s Online Schema Change (OSC) tool. I’ve had these thoughts for months now, pondering over improving oak-online-alter-table but haven’t got around to implement them nor even write them down. Better late than never.

The tool has some limitations. Some cannot be lifted, some could. Quoting from the announcement and looking at the code, I add a few comments. I conclude with a general opinion on the tool’s abilities.

“The original table must have PK. Otherwise an error is returned.”

This restriction could be lifted: it’s enough that the table has a UNIQUE KEY. My original oak-online-alter-table handled that particular case. As far as I see from their code, the Facebook code would work just as well with any unique key.

However, this restriction is of no real interest. As we’re mostly interested in InnoDB tables, and since any InnoDB table should have a PRIMARY KEY, we shouldn’t care too much.

“No foreign keys should exist. Otherwise an error is returned.”

Tricky stuff. With oak-online-alter-table, changes to the original table were immediately reflected in the ghost table. With InnoDB tables, that meant same transaction. And although I never got to update the text and code, there shouldn’t be a reason for not using child-side foreign keys (the child-side is the table on which the FK constraint is defined).

The Facebook patch works differently: it captures changes and writes them to a delta table,  to be later (asynchronously) analyzed and make for a replay of actions on the ghost table. Continue reading » “Thoughts and ideas for Online Schema Change”

Oracle week 2010 in Israel: not a single MySQL session

MySQL

Development, Middleware, [Oracle] Database, BI, ERP, CRM, SCM, EPM, SOA & BPM, Java, Security — all these and more are on the schedule. No MySQL track, not a single MySQL session.

Lack of speakers? Hardly. Lack of public interest? I can’t imagine.

Then what is it? I have no information, and don’t want to throw around suggestions.

Reading the convention’s objectives, I see nothing to suggest why MySQL would not be in. Heck, there’s even two new special seminars: “Family Economy” and “Career planning“.

Sorry, not providing a link this time (besides, it’s all Hebrew). If you’re eager to look it up, google for “Oracle week Israel”.

It’s a shame, and makes it harder to answer the “so what do you think Oracle will do to MySQL?” question I get to be asked ever so often.

openark-kit, Facebook Online Schema Change, and thoughts on open source licenses

MySQL

MySQL@Facebook team have recently published an Online Schema Change code for non blocking ALTER TABLE operations. Thumbs Up!

The code is derived from oak-online-alter-table, part of openark-kit, a toolkit I’m authoring. Looking at the documentation I can see many ideas were incorporated as well. And of course many things are different, a lot of work has been put to it by MySQL@Facebook.

openark-kit is currently released under the new BSD license, and, as far as I can tell (I’m not a lawyer), Facebook’s work has followed the license to the letter. It is a strange thing to see your code incorporated into another project. While I knew work has begun on the tool by Facebook, I wasn’t in on it except for a few preliminary email exchanges.

And this is the beauty

You release code under open source license, and anyone can pick it up and continue working on it. One doesn’t have to ask or even let you know. Eventually one may release back to the community improved code, more tested (not many comments on oak-online-alter-table in the past 18 months).

It is a beauty, that you can freely use one’s patches, and he can then use yours.

And here is my concern

When I created both openark-kit and mycheckpoint, I licensed them under the BSD license. A very permissive license. Let anyone do what they want with it, I thought. However Facebook’s announcement suddenly hit me: what license would other people use for their derived work?

The OSC has been release under permissive license back to the community (again, I am not a lawyer). But, someone else could have made it less friendly. Perhaps not release the code at all: just sell it, closed-source, embedded in their product. And I found out that I do not want anyone to do whatever they want with my code.

I want all derived work to remain open!

Which is why in next releases of code I’m authoring the license will change to less permissive and more open license, such as GPL or LGPL. (Of course, all code released so far remains under the BSD license).

Personal observation: more migrations from MyISAM to InnoDB

MySQL

I’m evidencing an increase in the planning, confidence & execution for MyISAM to InnoDB migration.

How much can a single consultant observe? I agree Oracle should not go to PR based on my experience. But I find that:

  • More companies are now familiar with InnoDB than there used to.
  • More companies are interested in migration to InnoDB than there used to.
  • More companies feel such migration to be safe.
  • More companies start up with an InnoDB based solution than with a MyISAM based solution.

This is the way I see it. No doubt, the Oracle/Sun deal made its impact. The fact that InnoDB is no longer a 3rd party; the fact Oracle invests in InnoDB and no other engine (Falcon is down, no real development on MyISAM); the fact InnoDB is to be the default engine: all these put companies at ease with migration.

Continue reading » “Personal observation: more migrations from MyISAM to InnoDB”

Poll: what (minor) versions of MySQL should be supported by an open source MySQL related project?

MySQL

I would like to get the community’s opinion about supporting older (minor) versions of MySQL in open source projects.

If I were to develop some open source project, and a bug report came which only applied to MySQL 5.0.51 (but more recent versions worked fine), would I need to fix the code so as to support this older version?

How about supporting 5.0.22 (released almost 4 years ago, with almost 70 revisions since)? Would you expect an open source project to support this MySQL version because, say, this is the default version in your yum repository?

I would like to concentrate on the currently stable MySQL versions: 5.0 and 5.1. Versions 4.x are out of the question for me, and 5.5 is not yet GA.

Sure, it would be great to support everything. But also time and effort consuming. So, I would greatly appreciate your feedback!
Continue reading » “Poll: what (minor) versions of MySQL should be supported by an open source MySQL related project?”