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# Month: November 2012

## Speaking in London: common_schema, DBA’s framework for MySQL

MySQL common_schema PerconaLive Speaking November 22, 2012

I’m happy to be speaking about common_schema at Percona Live London, Dec 4th, 2012. This will be the first chance for me to speak about common_schema, what I believe to be an extremely useful companion to your MySQL server.

I will show you how common_schema can leverage your SQL skills and give you new powers. Stuff you had to be SQL-Perl-super-expert to work through is easily attainable with common_schema and QueryScript. Some maintenance, security and auditing tasks are now a breeze. Writing server side scripts can be fun!

What I won’t do:

- Read the fancy manual aloud
- Walk you through every possible view, column, function, parameter and script

What I will do:

- Explain the nature of common_schema, show you the concepts behind it (and it is built with concepts in mind)
- Provide with selected examples (schema analysis, security, processes & transactions) — there’s much to go by, but no boring drill down into all details.
- Expose some cool hacks with QueryScript
- Do very brief (as time allows) live demos.

common_schema is an open source project and released under the BSD license.

Last April Roland Bouman gave a great talk about common_schema. This will not be the same talk; a lot has been developed by this time.

I’ll be speaking at a very challenging time slot; the three other talks running concurrent to my own are all great ones; I actually wanted to attend all three of them. Heck, Peter wants to (though contrary to belief he can’t fork() himself). So, no hard feelings if you choose another talk during this time slot. But I do know where you live.

## State of InnDB Online DDL in MySQL 5.6.8-RC

MySQL InnoDB New Features openark kit Review November 20, 2012November 20, 2012

5.6.8-rc is out, and so I’m following up on InnoDB’s online DDL new feature: the ability to SELECT, INSERT, DELETE, UPDATE a table even while an ALTER TABLE is executing on same table.

#### The brief summary

Not as advertised; many things can’t be done.

#### The longer review

I’m using 5.6.8-rc 64bit binary distribution for Linux, installed via mysqlsandbox. My hardware is irrelevant, but the fact I’m testing on my laptop assists me in that ALTER TABLE operations take a while, so that I’m able to easily type commands in two terminals and have the time to watch them being executed. Query cache is disabled. Continue reading » “State of InnDB Online DDL in MySQL 5.6.8-RC”

## Percona Live 2013: Tutorials schedule released!

MySQL community PerconaLive November 19, 2012

I’m pleased to announce the availability of the Tutorials Schedule for Percona Live MySQL Conference and Expo, 2013.

This schedule comes as the outcome of hard work put by the reviewing committee members. Thanks! This work is much appreciated!

We got a good number of submissions. We’ve also reached out to prominent speakers and companies we felt would give great tutorials. All were reviewed, rated, discussed, compared; re-reviewed; some required further feedback from speakers.

Thank you to all speakers for submitting their proposals! I’m very sorry if your tutorial didn’t make it through — we have good tutorials left out — there’s only so much time in one day!

#### What can you expect to see in the tutorials?

The single day tutorials should appeal to beginners, seasonal DBAs, developers and database experts alike. Talks target different levels, in 6 different tracks.

I think the king & queen of the 2013 conference will be High Availability and the Cloud. This follows the trend of maturing HA solutions for MySQL and the emergence of MySQL cloud offerings or opportunities.

- We will have MySQL on Amazon, NDB Cluster, Tungsten Replicator, XtraDB & Galera tutorials, as well as a HA evaluation tutorial. Pick your HA solution: chances are there’s a good tutorial on the subject. If not – don’t worry, lot’s of HA sessions expected as well.

- Not everything is HA. You will get the chance to learn about InnoDB architecture and tuning, Xtrabackup old and new features, and a full day operational DBA.

- Down to basics, learn about how to Build your indexes, get to know your Sphinx search capabilities, or learn about TokuDB implementation.

- Or you could learn about Debugging and crash testing, or Advanced query optimizer tuning.

The tutorials day is in particular important to settle as early as possible; it has a separate pricing model than the rest of the conference, and offers more in-depth drill downs into the particular technologies. So we’re happy to make it through, and encourage you to register. Thank you!

## MySQL 5.6 RC: further thoughts and questions

MySQL New Features November 19, 2012November 19, 2012

Here are a few questions I came up with while experimenting with MySQL 5.6.7 & 5.6.8. They are the impressions of a first-time encounter with 5.6, which is a single opportunity for a person to point out the things that strike as odd.

Bugs-wise, just submitted another crashing bug for 5.6.8. I’m just one man, so I extrapolate to realize there is still much work to be done.

The below list does not necessarily make for a bug list; mostly things that puzzle me. I hope it can stir some additional thinking.

1. Transportable tablespace: what’s the difference between FLUSH TABLES my_table WITH READ LOCK and FLUSH TABLES my_table FOR EXPORT? Both create the .cfg file, and both seem to operate just as well. One document says READ LOCK, another says FOR EXPORT.
2. What’s the ALGORITHM=? flag in online ALTER TABLE? Apparently one can write to altered table even on ALGORITHM=COPY. There’s not enough documentation to explain.
3. How come there’s not a single example of online InnoDB DDL in official docs?
4. Why the inconsistency of putting ALGORITHM=…, LOCK=… in between commas, as opposed to other flags/commands not between commas? For example: ALTER TABLE my_table ADD COLUMN i INT, ALGORITHM=COPY, LOCK=SHARED, ENGINE=InnoDB ROW_FORMAT=COMPRESSED KEY_BLOCK_SIZE=4
5. Why would anyone care about FULLTEXT search word proximity by bytes? Typically, one would want proximity by words. I can find the excuse for proximity by characters. By bytes? A user is not interested in the low level representation of the text!
6. Could we get a distinct tablespace for the mysql internal InnoDB tables? (I understand there’s a separate tablespace for UNDO logs)
7. Why the need to configure gtid_mode=ON as well as disable-gtid-unsafe-statements so as to enable GTID replication? If only the first is set, an error is produced upon CHANGE MASTER TO MASTER_AUTO_POSITION=1
8. And when said error is produced, why does it not mention disable-gtid-unsafe-statements, and instead read out a cryptic message? Also note this post by Giuseppe Maxia.

## Purging old rows with QueryScript: three use cases

MySQL Bulk operations common_schema Indexing QueryScript scripts November 14, 2012November 14, 2012

Problem: you need to purge old rows from a table. This may be your weekly/monthly cleanup task. The table is large, the amount of rows to be deleted is large, and doing so in one big DELETE is too heavy.

You can use oak-chunk-update or pt-archiver to accomplish the task. You can also use server side scripting with QueryScript, offering a very simple syntax with no external scripting, dependencies and command line options.

I wish to present three cases of row deletion, with three different solutions. In all cases we assume some TIMESTAMP column exists in table, by which we choose to purge the row. In all cases we assume we wish to purge rows older than 1 month.

We assume the naive query is this:

>     DELETE FROM my_schema.my_table WHERE row_timestamp < CURDATE() - INTERVAL 1 MONTH

#### Case 1: TIMESTAMP column is indexed

I almost always index a timestamp column, if only for being able to quickly purge data (but usually also to slice data by date). In this case where the column is indexed, it’s very easy to figure out which rows are older than 1 month.

We break the naive query into smaller parts, and execute these in sequence: Continue reading » “Purging old rows with QueryScript: three use cases”

## common_schema 1.2: security, partition management, processes, QueryScript goodies

MySQL common_schema Open Source partitioning QueryScript Security November 13, 2012

common_schema 1.2 is released! This version comes shortly after 1.1, yet contains quite a few interesting goodies:

- Account blocking
- Security audit
- RANGE partition management
- Slave status
- Better blocking and idle transaction management
- QueryScript goodies:
  - echo, report
  - while-otherwise statement; foreach-otherwise statement
  - Better variable scope handling
  - Complete support for variable expansion
  - Transaction support within QueryScript
- More summary info and SQL statements in processlist-related views

A closer look at these follows:

#### Account blocking

A new view called sql_accounts, inspired by oak-block-account (also see here and here) provides with the means of blocking use accounts (and releasing them, of course) without revoking their privileges. It offers the SQL statements to block an account (by modifying its password in a symmetric way) and to release an account (by modifying its password back to normal). It really works like a charm. Together with killall() and sql_accounts this gives the administrator great control over accounts.

#### Security audit

Imported from openark kit, and implemented via QueryScript, the security_audit() procedure will audit your accounts, passwords and general settings to find problems, pitfalls and security hazards. I will write more on this later.

#### RANGE partition management

The sql_range_partitions view manages your RANGE and RANGE COLUMNS partitioned tables by providing with the SQL statements to drop oldest partitions and to create the next (in sequence) partitions. See my earlier post. Continue reading » “common_schema 1.2: security, partition management, processes, QueryScript goodies”

## 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”

## Pop quiz: funny syntax

MySQL SQL Syntax November 5, 2012

The following questions are of little importance, yet I find them entertaining. I stumbled upon these while developing QueryScript.

Can you guess the results of the following statements?

#### Pop quiz 1

>     SET @x := 7;
>     SELECT ++@x;

What is the computation result? What will be the value of @x?

#### Pop quiz 2

>     SET @ := 4;
>     SELECT @ + @'' + @``

What is the computation result?

#### Pop quiz 3

>     SET @a := 2;
>     SELECT @a = @'a' = @`a`

Do we get TRUE or FALSE? When? Continue reading » “Pop quiz: funny syntax”