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# Tag: Opinions

## Why a professional conference must have a committee, and what that committee does

MySQL community Opinions PerconaLive December 14, 2013December 14, 2013

What exactly is it that a conference committee does? This post comes as response to a comment on A sneak peek at the Percona Live MySQL Conference & Expo 2014, reading:

> Why the same committee each year? Community should vote on proposals and committee should just work schedule,etc.

I’ll pick the glove and shed some light into the work of the committee. While this specific comment related to the Percona Live conference, I trust that my opinions expressed below apply just as well to any (technical?) professional conference; the point below can equally apply to conferences from Oracle MySQL Connect, O’Reilly Velocity to FOSDEM & PyCon.

I can sum up the entire answer with one word: “Discussion”. For a breakdown, please read through.

#### First, what’s not feasible with community-based voting, and what looks very wrong

So why not open up a voting system and let the community do the rating? I always disliked the “send an SMS to this number to vote for X” approach. It is so unbalanced and unreliable: if I were to submit a proposal describing how my company invented/develops/uses X to do great things, I can expect my co-workers to vote for me. In fact, my company would possibly ask my co-workers to do so. I stand a better chance if I work in a large company; less so in a small company.

Anonymous votes tend to be touched by politics. I could vote for my company, against a competing product, for my friends, against people I dislike, and none the wiser. We can take away anonymity, which means my votes will be public, which means they are visible to all. In which case my ranking will be affected by what people I rate would think of me; which means my rating would not be based on strictly professional/technical grounds.

But before we drop into this endless pit, let’s consider: will I, as a KMyPyVelocirails community member, really engage in reviewing over 300 submissions? How many members of my community would take so many hours of their time to do so? Let me clarify, this is a part-time job. It requires time, and it requires a mindset. I’m guessing here that you cannot count on everyone rating all talks. Some more prominent talks will be reviewed by more people, others may be left little to not reviewed in the first place.

The idea of a purely community based rating is romantic and beautiful, but not feasible.

And then there’s the discussion. Let’s look at some of the things the committee is engaged in to clarify.

#### Duties, responsibility and actions of a conference committee

The following discussion cannot be an exhaustive description of a committee’s work, but it can give a good glimpse into its scope. We begin with the commitment the members take upon themselves: to invest their time and will in the committee’s duties. Once you join in, you are expected to work and deliver. Continue reading » “Why a professional conference must have a committee, and what that committee does”

## 5 years of blogging

MySQL Opinions October 22, 2013

openark.org blog is now five years old. Hurrah!

Throughout these five years I posted almost exclusively MySQL oriented blogs, though I had every intention of writing on various engineering topics.

I still see blogging as one of the most important forms of knowledge sharing, and indeed for me the blogs aggregated at Planet MySQL are my main source of MySQL information. I especially like to read technical content straight from the developer; but am also keen on being updated with news on conferences, releases, distributions and some insightful opinions.

The advent of the Stack Exchange websites makes for a common place where people get to learn “how to issue this query” or “how replication works”. I can see the DBA site gaining popularity, though still going slow. Eventually I suspect it will be the one place where people share their questions and answers.

Nevertheless blogging is a great way of sharing a new finding of yours; express an opinion; review a product. So I hope for five more years of active blogging, and thank the readers of this blog for keeping watch!

Some numbers: to date I’ve posted 296 MySQL related posts (so 1.13 blog posts per week, evenly spread). The vast majority were technical; and a few opinions. I posted 6 comic strips; most of which were, I’m afraid, largely misunderstood (the blame is on me) and projected exactly the opposite perception I was trying to express. I’m bound to fail again.

Traffic can be better (not sharing all my secrets). Been a slow down in the past months. I know, I haven’t produced much Pie charts lately.

Again, thank you for reading or commenting. No point in blogging if no one pays attention to your blabbering! And do keep coming 🙂

## Percona Live 2013 keynotes: followup questions and discussion

MySQL Opinions PerconaLive April 28, 2013

Here are a few questions remained open for me from Percona Live 2013 about things that have been said during keynotes; I will appreciate a discussion on comments. Here goes:

#### Question #1

> Brian Aker (HP) asks Simone Brunozzi (Amazon) what the underlying technology for DynamoDB is. Simone says can’t disclose. Brian says: “it’s MySQL!!”. Simone says: “can’t disclose”. Brian insists: “it’s MySQL!!”

Seriously? I will be very much surprised to learn that DynamoDB uses MySQL; it doesn’t make sense to me. Why would Brian Aker say that though? Did he just mean to tease Simone or is there something I just don’t get? Continue reading » “Percona Live 2013 keynotes: followup questions and discussion”

## Sessions of interest in Percona Live 2013

MySQL Opinions PerconaLive February 5, 2013February 5, 2013

Percona Live 2013 is shortly upon us, and it might be a good idea to watch for what’s ahead of us.

#### Talks of interest

There is no way I can do justice to all. I wish to point out a small number of sessions I am personally interested in attending. I will not be able to attend them all, since there are too many sessions of interest and too few instances of myself (merely one).

I’ve tried to list some talks which are not absolutely obvious (when Peter Zaitsev speaks of MySQL performance, or Monty speaks about MariaDB, or Robert Hodges or Domas speak about replication — well — you’re certain to have the ins and outs, right?). I can also expect Galera or Percona XtraDB Cluster talks to attract a lot of attention. There is a lot of good content for each.

But I was happy to find some very special talks this year, which are not the “every conference has got to have one talk about this” type. Here’s a hybrid collection of both types.

After constructing the list I’ve intentionally dropped two random sessions. If you are speaking, and not mentioned here, your talk must be one of those two! Continue reading » “Sessions of interest in Percona Live 2013”

## Notes on “5 Tips for migrating your MySQL server to a Galera Cluster”

MySQL Galera Opinions December 17, 2012December 17, 2012

This post comes as response to 5 Tips for migrating your MySQL server to a Galera Cluster by Henrik Ingo (Galera), which is a good read. This post is a bit lengthy which is one of the reasons why I didn’t just comment on said post.

The Galera talk in London was indeed well crowded, judging from my own chair. I think there is an obvious interest in Galera, as well as a general thirst for information from real-life experience. I am personally very interested in production stories; either “war stories” or “peace stories” – anything to shed more light on the adoption of this technology.

For disclosure, I have not tried Galera myself as yet. Not on production nor on staging machines. But here’s a couple thoughts on Henrik’s post: Continue reading » “Notes on “5 Tips for migrating your MySQL server to a Galera Cluster””

## My take on privatized MySQL security bugs

MySQL Bugs Opinions November 8, 2012November 8, 2012

A couple weeks ago I submitted Bug #67315: Crashing server by stored function referencing user defined variable in query. If you press that link, you can’t see the bug (though I can as I submitted it).

This is due to Oracle’s policy for security-related bugs. Tomas Ulin, Vice President MySQL Development at Oracle , was kind enough to discuss Oracle’s policy with me, and these are the key points as I understand them:

Oracle’s basic approach is to protect its customers. By publicizing security-bugs, Oracle’s customers are vulnerable to black hatters attacks. Therefore Oracle takes measures and privatizes security bugs (crashing bugs can be treated as security bugs since a crash is a form of Denial of Service).

But what of a bug reported in a RC version, as was in my case? There is no strict policy there, according to Ulin. However with a version this close to GA, it is uncertain that a specific bug would be fixed in time. It may happen, then, that a bug would find itself well into GA releases, thereby exposing customers to attacks.

Moreover, GA bugs that are already fixed may remain private, as customers will not necessarily haste to upgrade their working servers for every bug fix.

#### My take

Bug privatization has disadvantages, as well: Continue reading » “My take on privatized MySQL security bugs”

## Further experiments with MySQL 5.6.7-RC: submit your bugs

MySQL New Features Opinions October 22, 2012

Here’s the background: I’m testing many features of MySQL 5.6.7-RC due to two reasons:

- I’m verifying my common_schema installs and works properly on 5.6
- I promised I would present a 45 minute “what’s new in MySQL 5.6” seminar in the upcoming OracleWeek (Israel)

In the case of common_schema, I have managed to find one weird bug (a behavior regression from 5.5) and one server-crashing bug, by merely running the project’s tests, known to pass on 5.1 and 5.5 (and not utilizing any 5.6 features).

In the case of my presentation, I’m getting acquainted with new syntax and functionality, and am getting unexpected results. I’ve hit replication issues and locking issues in online DDL.

If I am able to find these bugs within a few hours of experimenting & testing, then it is safe to assume we can extrapolate to many more bugs. This is not surprising; 5.6 boasts some 120 new features (I didn’t actually count them). Of course they would introduce new bugs.

The moral is this: if you’re interested in 5.6 as I am – and there’s a lot to wait for – please consider experimenting with it, and report as many bugs to bugs.mysql.com as possible. Reporting bugs is the user’s authoritative way of improving an open source product and pushing towards a stable release. Provide your feedback today!

## Experimenting with 5.6 InnoDB Online DDL (bugs included)

MySQL InnoDB New Features openark kit Opinions scripts October 18, 2012October 18, 2012

MySQL 5.6 offers the groundbreaking online DDL operations for InnoDB. Most common use cases will enjoy this feature, and the need for online alter table scripts will decrease. This is a killer feature!

I’ve put this new feature to the usability test. How did it go? Not too well, I’m afraid.

[Updates to this text inline], also see this followup.

#### sakila & DDL

sakila is still a very useful database. I say “still” because it is not very large, and computing power is getting stronger; yet on my laptop some operations can still take many seconds to complete, which is just fine for my tests.

Sakila tables are mostly InnoDB, and rental being the largest, I do:

>     node1 (sakila) > alter table sakila.rental engine=InnoDB;
>     Query OK, 16044 rows affected (6.94 sec)
>     Records: 16044  Duplicates: 0  Warnings: 0

So what can be executed during these 6.94 seconds? In a second terminal, I try the following: Continue reading » “Experimenting with 5.6 InnoDB Online DDL (bugs included)”

## Thoughts on MySQL 5.6 new replication features

MySQL Configuration InnoDB New Features Opinions Replication October 15, 2012

After playing a little bit with MySQL 5.6 (RC), and following closely on Giuseppe’s MySQL 5.6 replication gotchas (and bugs), I was having some thoughts.

These are shared for a few reasons:

- Maybe I didn’t understand it well, and someone could correct me
- Or I understood it well, and my input could be of service to the developers
- Or it could be of service to the users

#### InnoDB tables in mysql schema

The introduction of InnoDB tables in mysql makes for crash-safe replication information: the exact replication position (master log file+pos, relay log file+pos etc.) is updated on InnoDB tables; with innodb_flush_logs_at_trx_commit=1 this means replication status is durable and consistent with server data. This is great news!

However, the introduction of InnoDB tables to the mysql schema also breaks some common usage on installation and setup of MySQL servers. You can’t just drop your ib_data1 file upon dump+restore, since it also contains internal data. Giuseppe outlines the workaround for that.

I was thinking: would it be possible to have a completely different tablespace for MySQL’s internal InnoDB tables? That could be a single tablespace file (who cares about file-per-table on a few internal tables). And I’m throwing an idea without being intimate with the internals: you know how it is possible to span the shared tablespace across multiple files, as in: Continue reading » “Thoughts on MySQL 5.6 new replication features”

## MySQL 5.6 new features: the user’s perspective

MySQL InnoDB memcached New Features Opinions Replication October 5, 2012

This is a yet-another compilation of the new MySQL 5.6 feature set. It is not a complete drill down. This list reflects what I believe to be the interesting new features user and usability -wise.

For example, I won’t be listing InnoDB’s split of kernel mutex. I’m assuming it can have a great impact on overall performance due to reducing lock contention; but usability-wise, this is very internal.

The complication is an aggregate of the many announcements and other complications published earlier on. See a reference at the end of this post.

Do note I am not using 5.6 as yet; it is in RC, not GA. I am mostly excited just to write down this list.

#### InnoDB

- Online ALTER TABLE: if there is one major new feature in 5.6 you would want to upgrade for, this would be it. Add columns, drop columns, rename columns, add indexes, drop indexes – now online, while your SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE statements are running.
- Transportable tablespace files: copy+paste your_table.ibd files with FLUSH TABLE FOR EXPORT and ALTER TABLE … IMPORT TABLESPACE.
- FULLTEXT: for many, the one thing holding them back from leaving MyISAM behind. Now available in InnoDB with same syntax as with MyISAM.
- Memcached API: access InnoDB data via memcahced protocol, and skip the SQL interface.
- User defined table location: place your tables in your pre-defined location. Place other tables elsewhere. This is something I’ve been asked about for ages.

#### Continue reading » “MySQL 5.6 new features: the user’s perspective”