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Google Releases MySQL Enhancements
An anonymous reader noted that "Google has released its internally developed enhancements to MySQL to the open source community this week. Changes include improvements in replication, high availability configuration, and performance." It'll be interesting to see if the changes they made are of interest to other places using MySQL.
Did they fix that thing where it always sacrifices data integrity for speed?
(I'm not even trolling, I do want to know if they fixed that)
sic transit gloria mundi
No, all hail MySQL.
I'm a recent convert from SQL Server, and I love MySQL now.
The fact that I can download a copy and get it running in about 20 minutes is the best part. The fact that the admin is pretty damn good, and easy, is the part that keeps me using it.
Maybe there IS something to this whole open-source thing.
No reason to lie.
Ah, now this is how it's supposed to work. No bull like, "We're releasing improvements as MSN-SQL," or any other nonsense. Yay Google.
Always someone has power over you. The thing to consider is this: Is the power good, or bad?
MySQL is dual licensed so if they add this code they can't sell their product under another license..
Wiki for the patch here: http://code.google.com/p/google-mysql-tools/wiki/M ysql4Patches
df -h
At least with the GPL, anyway. You have a company like MySQL which actually makes a product, rather than bundling and providing services as the majority of the business. However because they can't exclusively control the app, they can't make a large amount of money except on other services and such. Then a company like Google comes in, with tons of resources, and makes great modifications to your code. The only problem is that you can't merge them into the commercial distribution without their permission. What's ironic about this is that being dual-licensed, the code would remain free for everyone to use under the GPL.
MySQL chose this approach, but I could see how this might make others less inclined to dual-license under the GPL.
Yes, but imagine the world's biggest Beowulf cluster of MySQL servers.
Now imagine them in Google's data centers.
Which, in fact, is where they are. Now do you see?
I wouldn't be so sure: the mysql administrator is not always able to restore a backup correctly. you are well advised to restore backups through the command line. it is also impossible (at least last time I checked) to automatically include all databases in a scheduled backup. You can only select the databases that are present at the time you schedule the backup.
furthermore, the mysql query browser screws up when you paste a query containing tabs. this particular bug was reported to mysql over a year ago. it was somewhat fixed, but not really.
I really like mysql but claiming that the admin is better than sql server is well, pushing it.
(Snicker.) In the building where I work, there are special supply cabinets for nomadic employees who use the flex offices. These have signs on them saying "These supplies are for flexible employees only!" Every time I see one, I want to add an addendum: "Inflexible employees fuck off!"
What good is speed without data integrity? If I can't trust my data, It doesn't matter how fast I can retrieve it.
If you have a read-only situation there's no need for full ACID compliance. I've seen some contrivances where MySQL reads happen from myASM databases, and the writes go into an InnoDB database, and something on the backend happens to replicates the changes into the 'read-only' databases reliably. I've just never had, myself, an application so speed critical that it was worth doing that instead of doing PostgreSQL for everything. But my use cases aren't everybody's use cases.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Whilst the link escapes me there is a set of admin tools for MySQL that are almost identical to the 2k5 ones for MSSQL. Truth be told it doesn't look as flash, but they are still really nice to use. The one installed on my laptop (hence not being able to remember the name) allows for highlight execution of part of script a-la the SQL Studio and cut and pastes fine, I'm sure there is more than one tool out there that can do this!
I use both MS SQL and MySQL in corporate environments for various purposes and have to say that I like both for different reasons. MySQL is "damned good" in its own right, but there are some ANSI features available in MSSQL I really have trouble living without (for example: DELETE FROM tblData WHERE fldValue = '3' OUTPUT INTO tblBackup). My thought would be to see what Google have to offer, if it helps me, then great, if it doesn't, it's great for the community, and in a few years time when MySQL has all the features I require I can finally throw out the MS SQL servers.
My $0.02 AU
Me failed English...
FreeBSD over Linux. If my comments seem odd, this may explain...
Because the replication support in MySQL is very basic. A single master for the whole database, isn't that a bit limited? I had to run two database processes just because I had two data sources to replicate from.
Unfortunately, the patches from Google don't really fix the basic problem. I think MySQL needs a complete redesign of the replication function. Oracle seems to handle this much better: the replication is controlled on the master, not the client, and it works in just about any combination you can imagine. That is not to say that the MySQL replication is not useful in certain situations (it fans better), but it is very much limited to one kind of application.
Way to go.
Umm, InnoDB is an engine for MySQL, they are still using MySQL. They just said they use the InnoDB engine exclusively rather than the other engines such as MyISAM. They probably never used MyISAM since it doesn't have foreign keys or transactions. No respected DBA would ever use MyISAM.
..? And no, they used MyISAM initially, you can check the comments after their original post.
Where did I say InnoDB wasn't MySQL
In fact the irony in your post is big, as the original post addresses just people like you who are very quick to decide what a "respected DBA" would do, or not (versus reality).
I'll quote one of the Google devs answering questions about it:
Q: holy crap, you ran adwords on a transactionless database?
A: Yep.
Q: you have balls. and you're lucky as hell nothing (else) went wrong.
A: Nope. Luck had nothing to do with it. If you don't have transactions you just roll your own. It's actually not hard at all.
Bottom line is, you use transactions as it easier to retain data integrity and makes for simpler code. You don't use transactions to be "respected DBA". Whatever reasons they had to use MyISAM was probably sound, but after certain level of sophistication, they switched to InnoDB to make things easier to manage.
Gee, thanks. What about us jack-of-all-trade schmoes who only use the basics and aren't running company wide databases? The amount of data I use the database for is actually quite small, relatively speaking. I run (among all my other jobs) our internal webserver, which means I need to write all the code, including the presentation part, and administer the database.
Sorry, we can't all be gurus, but I still need to back up my tables every so often.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
The survey ``asked developers at 517 companies in its 2006 winter survey what database they developed with'' with developers allowed to give multiple answers. It isn't clear to me why Oracle was split between two versions while none of the other databases were.
Because it's a hell of a lot more fun than using a mouse trap and the mouse is just as dead.
Well said, not everyone can be the guru of everything. This macho geek attitude of 'If you cant do it in this super efficient, optimal way, you have no business doing it' is very detrimental to the OSS community. I am a software engineer, but I do basic admin stuff too, there are admins in my company who are obviously better than me.. but that doesn't mean that I cant take care of some of the duties too. I dont have to be supremely competent.. just competent enough.
- Tempestdata
Yeah, but the setup time and learning curve is atrocious, and you run the risk of shooting your own foot off.
BigMan, If you're coming from SQL Server, you'd be better off downloading and using Postgres 8.2.4 for windows, from here. PG is BSD licensed, which means you can bundle it with your commercial .NET-based apps for free.
The management interface for PG is on-par with SQL Server Studio; I use both on a daily basis. It's also "20 minutes to set up and start populating data". As an added plus, Postgres has all of the "standard" syntax and referential data integrity turned on out of the box.
You use MySQL if: a) you're developing a LAMP app for an inexpensive webhost that only allows MySQL databases, or b) all of your developers cut their teeth on MySQL and therefore productivity will drop if you ask them to use standard compliant syntax, or c) You're using an app (like SugarCRM or WordPress), the developers of which insisted on using funky MySQL-only features (instead of standard portable syntax) and therefore it's too much work to port to a standard syntax.
In all other cases, you use Postgres or some other commercial database. Postgres scales much better than InnoDB on any combination of a) larger numbers of read-write transactions, b) larger numbers of connections, c) more processors, d) larger datasets (including and beyond 400-500GB).
Cheers, -J