Today’s trivial MySQL system variable:

old_alter_table

The interesting bit is that this is a system variable, and shows up in SHOW GLOBAL VARIABLES, but is not documented on the Server System Variables manual page.

Instead, it is documented on the manual page for Server options.

Unfortunately, that documentation is very sparse. It tells us:

old-alter-table is an option that can be set in an option file (such as /etc/my.cnf)

old_alter_table is the name of the variable.

And….that’s it. It is neither a system nor status variable, there is no scope, and no entry for whether or not it is dynamic. These last 2 are baffling, though they show up in other variables in the matrix on the “server options” manual page. The scope is either session or global; there is no NULL — the scope may not be *relevant*, but it still exists.

As well, either the variable can be settable on commandline, or not. There is no meaning to a NULL value in that column.

The most egregious issue is that there is no documentation whatsoever about what the variable does. What happens if I set old_alter_table to ON?

(My guess is that it’s a placeholder for the behavior of ALTER TABLE in 5.0 and earlier, perhaps it disables the use of ALTER TABLE ONLINE? My second guess is that whatever the functionality, it is not implemented yet, similar to date_format).

The July meeting of the Boston MySQL User Group will feature Eric Day, a prominent Drizzle developer, talking about Drizzle and Gearman:

In this talk we will discuss two growing technologies: Drizzle and Gearman.

We will explain what the Drizzle project is, what we aim to accomplish, and an overview of where we are at. We will also be introducing the fundamentals of how to leverage Gearman, an open-source, distributed job queuing system. Gearman’s generic design allows it to be used as a building block for almost any use - from speeding up your website to building your own Map/Reduce cluster. We will tie Drizzle and Gearman together and demonstrate how they work in a custom Search Engine application.

————————

Here is the URL for MIT’s Map with the location of this building:
http://whereis.mit.edu/map-jpg?selection=E51&Buildings=go

This map shows the MBTA Kendall Stop:
http://whereis.mit.edu/map-jpg?selection=L5&Landmarks=go
(the stop is in red on that map, and you can see E51 in the bottom right)

Here are the URL’s for the parking lots (free and open to the public after 3 pm):
http://whereis.mit.edu/map-jpg?selection=P4&Parking=go
http://whereis.mit.edu/map-jpg?selection=P5&Parking=go

Free pizza and soda will be served, so please RSVP accurately.

To RSVP anonymously, please login to the Meetup site with the e-mail address “admin at sheeri dot com” and the password “guest”.

For more information, see: http://mysql.meetup.com/137/

This is the 150th edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs. Someone accidentally left Dave Edwards‘ cage unlocked, and he escaped, thus leaving me with the pleasurable duty of compiling the 150th weekly Log Buffer.

Many people other than Dave are finding release this week. Giuseppe Maxia explains some details of MySQL’s New Release Model. Andrew Morgan announces a New MySQL Cluster Maintenance Release. Aleksandr Kuzminsky of the MySQL Performance Blog releases build16 of the Percona MySQL binaries (versions 5.0.77 and 5.0.82), which adds some 5.4 features and fixes some bugs.

Darran Cassar, the MySQL Preacher, has created a package for Security Roles and Password Expiry on MySQL. And for a future MySQL release, look for Two New Status Variable Patches, for query invalidation count and a last received datetime for replication heartbeat. These patches were contributed by MySQL Support Team member Andrew Hutchins.

Dave Beulke points out a new feature in DB2 9.7 — DB2 Compatible with Oracle.

To prepare for a future SQL Server release where CREATE DEFAULT, sp_bindefault and sp_unbindefault will be deprecated, Martin Bell advocates Changing Bound Defaults to Default Constraints. If you are going to upgrade SQL Server, definitely look at the notes from SQL Master of SQL Server QA’s presentation on SQL Server Upgrade Issues and How To Evaluate Potential Issues.

Stewart Smith lets is know that Drizzle Tarballs for the Next Milestone - Aloha are being released weekly. Meanwhile, Jay Pipes and the rest of the Drizzle team find, fix and explain the cause of a performance regression in Drizzle Performance Regression Solved - TCMalloc vs. No TCMalloc.

Lenz Grimmer has started organizing OpenSQLCamp 2009, Aug 22-23 in Germany; he posts details and links in Speaking at FrOSCon and Organizing the OpenSQLCamp 2009, European Edition. If you want to speak, Lenz also lets you know that Ronald Bradford gives out a discount code and reminds us that we can still attend OSCon 2009 at a Discounted Rate (until June 23rd). OSCon 2009 will be held July 20-24 in San Jose, California. And in Iowa, Michelle Ufford sends out the East Iowa SQL Saturday Call for Speakers to be held on Saturday, October 10, 2009.

Getting back to basics, Richard Foote explains Oracle’s cost-based optimizer in CBO and Indexes, an Introduction for Absolute Beginners. Speaking of optimizations, Valcora has Another Way To Do Performance Tuning — make sure you actually need the queries that are running against your system!

Tanel Poder points to a blog post on Using Perfsheet and TPT Scripts for Solving Real Life Performance Problems in an Oracle RAC environment. And Jonathan Lewis provides a script you can run if you are concerned about the potantial of Oracle PGA leaks. Over at Oraclue, Miladin Modrakovic shows how to discover memory “leaks and other problems with allocations of memory” in Memory Annotations and Oradebug.

If you are migrating a database from Oracle to MySQL, you may be interested in George Trujillo’s process of Converting an Oracle Schema to MySQL.

Kimberly L. Tripp reveals a lot of information about how SQL Server optimizes queries and common myths when she reveals The Tipping Point Query Answers. David Fetter shares Materialized Views Performance Tips in Postgres, and Leo Hsu and Regina Obe talk about Planner Statistics in the Postgres optimizer.

In the land of DB2, Henrik Loeser shares a PureXML Performance Tip: A Sequence of Good Indexes.

Coskan explains
How to Use Sysman Schema Without Oracle Enterprise Manager. John Hallas notes that using Oracle’s EM to migrate a database to ASM is easy, but seems slow, in ASM Metadata and Migrating a Database to ASM. He then goes on to share a coworker’s Script to Backup ASM Metadata. J. Arneil shows how to go about Fixing up ASM Disk Header Corruption, should you find yourself in a rough spot.

Aaron Alton has a great article telling us that in Defensive Programming, Assumptions Must be Guaranteed or Tested, and another one on handling tags efficiently in Full Text Search vs. Denormalized Tables Remus Rusanu provides a Transact-SQL stored procedure template for Exception Handling and Nested Transactions.

I’ll end with a link to another survey on What’s the hardest part of becoming an involuntary DBA? It’s one simple question, so go fill it out! You have the time, especially since Craig Mullins points out that on average, we got a 4.6% salary increase in 2008 in Salaries for Data Professionals Inching Upward. To learn more and become even better in your field, get a 15-day free trial to Safari Books Online from O’Reilly, with a 15% discount if you continue past the free trial, courtesy of Susan Visser.

About six months ago, the question of storing images in a database came up. This is one of my favorite topics, and has many database-agnostic parts.

Personally, I think “tell me about storing images in a database” is actually a great interview question, because you will be able to see the difference between someone who has just memorized “what’s right” versus someone who is really thinking. It also helps you see how someone will communicate — if they just say “NEVER do it, it’s as bad as crossing the streams!” then they are a type of person that gives you a short answer, without much explanation, and without many nuances. (That may be what you are looking for, but usually you want someone who gives reasons for why they strongly feel one way or another).

Consider the following cases:

What about storing lots of small
(say 1Mb or less) images that change frequently (say, dating profile pictures)?

What about large images that change infrequently (say, highly detailed satellite images)?

How important is consistency, and how will data consistency be maintained if images are stored outside the database? How will consistent backups be done?

What other resources (such as a CDN) are available?

What compliance and auditing issues might this client have?

What is the “sweet spot” in terms of size of an image stored in the database, and does that apply to text too? Would it be OK to have a TEXT or LONGTEXT field in the database, but all images are stored outside of the database?

All of these (and more) may swing the pendulum one way or another.

Putting images on a filesystem is the most popular method of doing things. We do have a client that stores “big BLOBby data” in a table (documents, images) — this is mostly for consistency and archiving purposes.

The cons of storing images in a database:
- more db traffic — in, out, and through (where through = replication)
- backups and exports from the db are more of a pain. Data/index files and tablespaces can get quite large. It’s nicer to be able to rsync
files….
- restores are more of a pain too.
- there is no computational stuff really that the db can do (other than, say, length). It cannot sort, compare, etc (well it can but it’s
meaningless). Using separate files makes coding actions such as like making thumbnails much easier.

The pros of storing images in a database:
- you have data integrity and consistency. If you delete a record you can cascade that delete down to the image. You cannot do a JOIN of an OS
and a db.
- databases are really really good at storage and retrieval. It can be argued that filesystems are really really good at storage and retrieval too, but for high activity only certain types of filesystems are, and if you do not have a ReiserFS or MogileFS expert, you may end up with more
than you bargained for. Very likely, you have someone already knowledgeable about databases.

Things that can be pros and cons:

- filesystem vs. database caching. This really depends on the filesystem and the DBMS you’re using. Many folks also use other caching methods for images too…..(webserver/app server/memcached/CDN/whatever)

Here are some references:

Oracle’s whitepaper on The Move to Store Images in a Database
An Article I wrote in Mar 2006, which is still highly relevant. Make sure to read all the comments, including following links like Mike Kruckenberg’s thoughts.

As Baron points out, Percona’s Xtrabackup tool can be used just like InnoDB Hot Backup.

Many are wondering, “is it good enough?” In fact, I wondered the same thing, and after a few weeks of using and testing Xtrabackup (on machines that have MyISAM and InnoDB tables), I can say:

0) We have not run into any problems with backing up InnoDB tables; on the machines we’ve run it on (RHEL 5.3 and Debian) it has been stable.

1) We were able to use one of the binaries provided by Percona — we did not have to compile anything. Binaries are provided for 64-bit versions of Linux

2) Innobackupex is the script analogous to Innobackup. Basically, this is a wrapper script for Xtrabackup that will copy the non-InnoDB tables.

3) Usually we run InnoDB Hot Backup from a non-privileged user. We had to run Xtrabackup as the mysql user; we think this is because it writes a state file in the datadir, but we did not dig too hard — once we saw that running it from the mysql user worked, we just left it like that.

4) Xtrabackup does not have a –compress option like InnoDB hot backup does. Having the option would be useful, but I believe this option will come soon.

Currently, for clients who want a hot backup solution but do not want to pay for InnoDB Hot Backup, Pythian recommends Xtrabackup.

Today’s contradiction:

MySQL has server variables named new and old.

The new variable can be set per-session and globally, and is dynamic. The old variable is not dynamic, and only global in scope. Both default to FALSE in MySQL 5.1.

According to the manual, the new variable:

was used in MySQL 4.0 to turn on some 4.1 behaviors, and is retained for backward compatibility.

That same page notes the following about the old variable:

when old is enabled, it changes the default scope of index hints to that used prior to MySQL 5.1.17. That is, index hints with no FOR clause apply only to how indexes are used for row retrieval and not to resolution of ORDER BY or GROUP BY clauses.

That’s right — the old variable changes some index hint behavior to before 5.1.17, and the new variable is provided for backwards compatibility of a 4.0 function.

Perhaps now that they have already used the vague terms, MySQL will stick to descriptive names, such as old_index_hints and new_behavior (or, even better, specifying what that new behavior is. If not in the variable itself, at least in the manual!)

Yesterday, The Pythian Group issued a press release about my book, Pythian’s partnership with Sun, and our new “MySQL Adoption Accelerator Package”. I am not a marketing guru, but I can tell you what we the package means in terms of new work that the MySQL teams have been doing.

Basically, the MySQL Adoption Accelerator Package combines customized training with a comprehensive audit of systems. The name “Adoption Accelerator” makes it sound like it’s only for new applications that are almost ready to go live. What the program actually does is have us evaluate your systems, and intensively train you in the areas you want and need. The program is designed to suit all your needs, whether it’s teaching you about one topic (say, query optimization) or an entire range of topics, from Architecture to ZFS (special issues with running MySQL on ZFS, that is, but that did not fit a cute “from A-Z” model…).

Whether you have already adopted MySQL or are thinking of converting from Oracle, DB2, Microsoft SQL Server or even sqlite, this new package may be what you need.

And now, the full text of the press release, for the curious:

‘MySQL Administrator’s Bible’ Hits the Bookstands: Pythian Launches MySQL Accelerator Adoption Package

The Pythian Group, the leading provider of remote database services, is pleased to announce that the much-anticipated MySQL Administrator’s Bible, written by employee Sheeri K. Cabral, is now available.

Published by Wiley, MySQL Administrator’s Bible is a comprehensive guide to using and administering MySQL. Ideal for the beginner and the experienced administrator, the book’s 22 chapters cover the fundamentals of MySQL database management-including MySQL’s unique approach to basic database features and functions-as well as SQL queries, data and index types, stored procedure and functions, triggers and views, events and transactions. It also discusses such topics as MySQL server tuning, administering storage engines, caching, backup and recovery, managing users, index tuning, database and performance monitoring, security, and more.

Cabral is a world-renowned MySQL expert and a sought-after speaker for many conferences, including the MySQL Conference and Expo (where she delivered a keynote this year), OSCon and LISA. She founded and organizes the Boston, Massachusetts MySQL User Group and in 2007 and 2008 won the MySQL Community Member of the Year Award.

In her job at Pythian, Cabral provides database administration support and consulting services to enterprises worldwide. She is one of several Certified MySQL DBAs at Pythian, which boasts an impressive 75 per cent certification rate.

On April 21, Sun Microsystems named Pythian its first authorized MySQL Enterprise Remote DBA partner, as part of Sun’s MySQL Enterprise Connection Alliance (MECA) partner program. As the only Platinum partner in the program, Pythian offers the highest level of support and care available for customers.

IODA, the industry-leading digital distribution company for the global independent music community, and Conductor, a leading provider of search engine optimization technology and services, have just signed on as Pythian’s first Platinum customers within the program. Pythian is celebrating the launch of Cabral’s book by giving complimentary copies to IODA and Conductor, and to the next eight customers to join the program.

“Pythian is uniquely positioned to take advantage of two interesting trends that are happening in the IT industry,” said Paul Vallee, Founder and Executive Chairman at Pythian. “First, a growing number of companies, large and small, are moving applications to MySQL. Second, outsourcing remote DBA service providers is on the rise. Enterprises want to reduce costs without sacrificing performance and industry best-practices.”

Anticipating this demand, Pythian has launched the MySQL Adoption Accelerator Package: a series of interactive training and consulting sessions that prepares DBA teams to deploy MySQL more securely, reliably and efficiently in their production environments. The package is a comprehensive deployment readiness program that covers all aspects of a deployment from an overview of MySQL and comparisons to other databases to strategies for performance testing and developer support and mentoring.

Cost and Availability

MySQL Administrator’s Bible is sold through most bookstores including Wiley and Amazon.com. It retails for $US 49.99. The MySQL Adoption Accelerator Package is available immediately. For more information, contact sales@pythian.com.

About Pythian

The Pythian Group is a global industry-leader in remote database administration services and consulting for MySQL, Oracle and SQL Server. Since 1997, companies have trusted Pythian to keep their database infrastructures running efficiently while strategically aligning IT with business goals. Pythian’s unparalleled DBA skills, mature methodologies, best practices and tools enable clients to do more with fewer resources. Pythian’s corporate headquarters is in Ottawa Canada, with offices worldwide. Pythian was the first managed services provider to build a practice around MySQL in 2002. For more information visit: www.pythian.com. Follow Sheeri Cabral’s blogs on MySQL: http://www.pythian.com/news/author/sheeri. Have a question? Use our hashtag #Pythian on Twitter and ask away.

Contacts:
Jolita Communications for Pythian
Lisa Courtney Lloyd
613-271-7512
lcourtneylloyd@jolita.ca

In the wake of Meetup.com changing their sponsorship agreements, Technocation, Inc., an international not-for-profit group, has set up a fund for user group sponsorships. You can use the button below to donate any amount of money in US funds via PayPal:

(all monies sent through that button will be earmarked as a directed donation to the “User Group Fund”. In the interest of not cluttering up this blog post with a Donate button for each currency, you can use PayPal to send funds in *any* currency to “donate@technocation.org”. Just be sure to specify if you want the money to go to specifically to the User Group Fund.*)

Note that meetup.com’s fees are $144 per year ($12 per month).

Four years ago, MySQL and Meetup.com entered into an agreement. I have no idea of the details of this sponsorship, though from reading in between the lines, I believe the sponsorship was an in-kind sponsorship — that is, no money exchanged hands, but there were mutually agreed upon benefits. I have no idea what the benefits to Meetup.com were — publicity or free consulting, perhaps.

What I do know is that Meetup.com is changing the way they are doing sponsorships. Arjen Lentz blames Lenz of the community team for not setting a reminder, saying that doing so “would’ve preempted anything”. The only thing a reminder would have done would have been to give MySQL more time to figure out what to do, and the end result would be the same — user groups can stay at meetup.com, and find a way to pay the fees, or they can migrate to a free system.

He also notes that it’s “Interesting that none of the MySQL Community team are themselves organisers or meetups/usergroups, they’d have been informed.” David Skujarne feels similarly, noting “it feels like this was just tossed this back to organizers to fix.” And yet, I have had a conversation earlier this week from a prominent community leader who was worried that MySQL was “taking over” a certain community event that is in its early planning stages. So which way do we want it? Do we want a volunteer-led community, or a community led by paid liaisons from MySQL?

Arjen commented to another post with his concern “that many will just shut down the group rather than move or pay.” In all my discussions with user group leaders, not one of them has even thought to shut down the group. Some have made the decision to stay on meetup.com and pay fees out-of-pocket, others have made the decision to move to a free service, still others are dedicated to finding sponsors (send mail to donate@technocation.org if you would like to be matched with a sponsor), and a few have passed the baton to another leader to make the decision.

Mostly, though, I have had people offering me money (David will be happy to know that those people include individuals on the MySQL Community Team) and moral support so that user groups can continue. And so, I have turned those monetary offers into something more: a fund. Let’s see how long we, as a community, can keep ourselves going.

Will some user groups close up shop? Probably. My own user group has had 40 user group meetings, which would not have happened if MySQL did not sponsor us. If the Boston MySQL User Group closed tomorrow, we still would have had those 40 meetings. So that is still a benefit. With luck and financial contributions, as a community we can stop whining and do something about the situation we find ourselves in.

* If you would like to send a physical payment (check, money order, postal order, in any currency), you can make it payable to Technocation, Inc. and send it via post to:

Technocation, Inc.
PO Box 380221
Cambridge, MA 02138
USA

Should you need it for your records, Technocation’s EIN (US tax id) is 20-5445375. Technocation, Inc. is a 501(c)3 corporation, and donations are tax-deductible to the fullest extent of the law.

A year ago, the outline was being written. A lot of work was crammed into the intervening months, and I am happy and proud to announce that the MySQL Administrator’s Bible has been published, and is sitting on the shelf at many major booksellers already. The official publication date is today — Monday, May 11th, 2009 — although some stores have had copies for a week, including Amazon.com.

The MySQL Administrator’s Bible, published by Wiley Press (available on Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/MySQL-Administrators-Bible-Sheeri-Cabral/dp/0470416912/, fully covers how to administer MySQL 5.1. It is suitable for people new to MySQL, although as an experienced MySQL DBA I can say that I learned a lot while researching and writing this book, and I believe that even veteran DBAs can learn from this book.

This book for anyone who wants to learn how to use and administer MySQL. Unlike other beginning books, however, it will appeal to DBAs who are experienced in other database systems such as Oracle, Postgres, Microsoft SQL Server, DB2, Sybase, Firebird. For example, the book contains a chapter on how MySQL’s SQL is different from the SQL standard. Basic SQL has been added as a feature of the companion website, so that those who do not know how to form a query can learn, but those who are well versed in SQL do not feel they have wasted money buying a book where they already know some of the material in it.

The detailed table of contents can be viewed or downloaded as a PDF. Or, if scanning the index is your cup of tea, it is also available as a PDF. The cover price is $49.99, but Amazon.com is selling it for $31.49.

So, I was pointed to a post by Dean Ellis saying that MySQL needs a mothership which was written in response to another post by Baron Schwartz saying a mothership might not be the best thing for MySQL. Selena Decklemann recently posted about the issue of not having a company behind the software in the Postgres world.

Baron’s first post was spurned by someone saying:
you know, you guys really need Sun/MySQL, because without the mother ship, things will fall apart and your own business will fail.

Dean thinks this may be have been a conversation he had, and states:
What I actually said was: I believe that a successful commercial enterprise called “MySQL” is necessary in order to create the types of opportunities that exist in the “MySQL Ecosystem” today.

So, what does having a company behind MySQL provide? To be more clear, I am specifically answering “What has MySQL and/or Sun been able to provide to the MySQL Ecosystem that was not there before?”

I would like to note that I am not making a value judgment on having a company behind MySQL.

Dean’s post tackles the generic case of “a company behind open source software” — he makes the unfortunate statement that a web server does simple tasks, thus Apache does not need a company behind it. It is plain to see that Apache has survived for over 10 years without being principally owned by a company. But all of the reasons Dean gives for MySQL needing a “mothership” are true of Apache. I could argue that databases do simple tasks too — store, process and retrieve information (hey, just like a webserver).

But that’s not my point. Having a company behind MySQL allowed MySQL to:

attract developers
have a centralized place for MySQL knowledge
write good documentation

However, having a company behind MySQL has caused problems. As I see it, there are two problems. The first is difficulty in accepting contributions back from the community. That was not because of a decision from a business person. That was, and is, because the software is full of code that does not (literally) meet up to its own standards. There is legacy code that is decades old. There is new code that has been hacked together. Legacy code and hacks were *enabled* by having a centralized place for development.

When the time came that folks wanted to decentralize, it was not easy to do so.

The second problem is that in trying to monetize MySQL, certain things were irrevocably changed.

I want to address the original statement: without the mother ship, things will fall apart and your own business will fail. Pythian offers MySQL DBA services — ongoing and emergency — and that business will not fail if there is no “mother ship”.

So, what if the company behind MySQL dissolved? A few hundred people, including some of my friends, would be out of a job. The User Conference would cease to exist, replaced by smaller conferences such as the Postgres community already has. MySQL development would have to be picked up by other people/companies. This last part has already started happening.

Would Fortune 500 companies stop using MySQL because there was no company behind it? No. There are still ways to prove due diligence from a compliance standpoint.

As things have stood for the past 2 years, “things falling apart” has been both decelerated and accelerated by having a company behind MySQL and being acquired.

The fact is that MySQL is the world’s most popular open source database. I *believe* that having a company behind it helped it gain that status, but I do not believe it is currently necessary to have a company behind it right now. Trying to monetize an open source product can hurt it, a lot; trying to monetize MySQL has done a lot of damage.

Right now, I see development happening inside the company and outside the company. There are now three active release series (5.0, 5.1, 5.4) — will MySQL be able to handle the engineering, QA and support workload that comes along with it? Percona, RedHat and Debian have released binaries for MySQL, with the former company actually making significant changes. The Monty Program offers non-recurring engineering of MySQL (ie, bugfixes, patches, features). 42sql.com and OpenQuery offer training.

The company behind MySQL offers development, support, training, documentation, marketing, QA, binary packaging, forums, lists, and more. Most of the company’s offerings are already being done by others on a smaller scale; what is not is superfluous. In fact, the real value of the company seems to be documentation and QA.

To finish off this post, I would like to reiterate that I am not making a value judgment on having a company behind MySQL. I do not think a company will make MySQL fail, nor do do not think a company is necessary for MySQL’s success. All I am saying is that it is not NECESSARY to have a company behind MySQL.

The bad news is that whatever agreement MySQL AB had with Meetup.com has ended. As per the wiki at http://forge.mysql.com/wiki/How_to_create_a_user_group:

MySQL AB has an agreement in place with meetup.com to cover the organizer fees. Simply click at the link at the top of the meetup.com page to request your electronic voucher so you can become an organizer.

Unfortunately, this agreement has ended, so there’s going to have to be a more manual process to get MySQL to sponsor the meetup groups. At its cheapest, a year of meetup.com is $144.

The good news is that Giuseppe and Dups (as well as the local Sun/MySQL folks in Boston who also sponsor the pizza and soda we have) have expressed that they are dedicated to sponsoring these user groups, so nobody has to go around digging for spare change just yet.

Here’s the sad e-mail I received:

from Meetup Support
to sheeri
date Mon, May 4, 2009 at 5:52 PM
subject Greetings from Meetup Support (KMM1797374I15977L0KM)
mailed-by meetup.com

Hello Sheeri,

Thanks for your patience while we looked into this!

I did some research and My SQL will no longer be sponsoring Meetup
Groups. Therefore, you’ll need to purchase a subscription plan in order
to continue hosting the Group on Meetup.com. Sorry about that!

There are 3 price plans available:

$12 a month for 6 months (a single $72 charge)

$15 a month for 3 months (a single $45 charge)

$19 per month

Each plan has a 30-day money back guarantee. Organizers can run up to 3
Meetup groups with their subscription.

You can view and update your subscription plan from here:

http://www.meetup.com/account/subscription/

If you have any other questions, please let me know.

Sincerely,

Antonio Ortiz
Meetup Support Specialist
Meetup HQ

1048909 is your incident number. Please do not remove this number from
the message.

Do you have_community_features? I do!

SHOW GLOBAL VARIABLES LIKE 'have_community_features';
+-------------------------+-------+
| Variable_name           | Value |
+-------------------------+-------+
| have_community_features | YES   |
+-------------------------+-------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

I am pretty sure this is one of those variables that MySQL has put in as an unused placeholder, but for now, it is not even documented as unused (as are table_lock_wait_timeout, http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/server-system-variables.html, and a Google search restricted to the site dev.mysql.com turns up only one match, which is not useful: http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Adev.mysql.com+have_community_features

I wonder if using this parameter could have been an easier way to deal with the release of MySQL 5.4. I wonder what it is used for, or what it will be used for. In all the versions of 5.1 I have access to, I see the parameter in there (from 5.1.29 - 5.1.32).

More interestingly, on a 6.0.5 server:

Server version: 6.0.5-alpha-community MySQL Community Server (GPL)

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.

mysql> SHOW GLOBAL VARIABLES LIKE 'have_community_features';
+-------------------------+-------+
| Variable_name           | Value |
+-------------------------+-------+
| have_community_features | NO    |
+-------------------------+-------+
1 row in set (0.03 sec)

This has been logged as Bug 44651.

By now many folks know that MySQL documentation is not changing its license. This is an issue with many sides, but before I go through them, I want to address a comment made by Masood Mortazavi:

People who are interested in forking the server — and potentially interested in creating what is in effect separate communities of their own — should probably develop their own docs for their own forks.

(There is a cost involved here, I know. However, it should be a cost worth paying if developers of forks really believe in their work. MySQL AB certainly paid that cost in developing the docs while it had already made the code itself freely available under GPL. So, the playing ground among all forks, etc., and including MySQL itself, is actually quite level.)

MySQL AB paid the cost in developing the *software* as well. Why is it that the cost of writing documentation from scratch is acceptable, but the cost of writing the *software* from scratch isn’t?

I totally understand the concern that if people have the same rights to fork the documentation as they do to fork the code, confusion may arise. Many do not agree that the risk is high enough to warrant keeping the documentation “closed”. However, even if that is the case, Section 2 of GPLv2 states:

You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and
distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1
above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:

a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices
stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.

So, if Sun/MySQL[/Oracle/whatever] was *really* worried about confusion, they would publish the documentation with a GPLv2 license, and then have their legal department send cease and desist letters to anyone who modified the documentation without having a prominent notice stating that they have modified the documentation.

My question to readers is: “If the Oracle Corporation decided to close the source of MySQL, would anyone notice?”

Your first thought may be, “I was *just* reading a blog post that talked about more community contributions being accepted!” However, if you actually search around for the details of the community contributions, you will note that, as in the past, it is still taking a lot of time to QA the contributions, and even once contributions are accepted, they are not put in a release we will see any time soon. For an example, see my comment to that post, where I link to documents showing that the only piece of community code that was specific enough to find will be put into MySQL version 7.1.

Hopefully, as announced at the Partner Meeting at the recent MySQL User Conference, the roadmap won’t be frozen as it is now, and features can get into a release if they are complete (including testing and QA) within a certain timeframe.

This year’s Oracle Open World is taking place from October 11-15th, 2009 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA. Paul Vallee noted that Oracle’s acquisition of Sun means that Open World will probably want a MySQL track, and Matt Yonkovit of Big DBA Head mentioned that a blog post on it would spread the word.
The Call for Presentations closes April 26th, which is in just 3 days. You can find out more and submit presentations at http://tinyurl.com/oow09prop. I spoke at Oracle Open World last year on “How to Be an Oracle ACE” and attending the conference was pretty mind-blowing.
If you do submit a talk, feel free to comment here with the title so we can get a broad range of topics submitted, not just 100 speakers submitting “MySQL for the Oracle DBA”.

Slides:
http://www.technocation.org/files/doc/2009Keynote.pdf
References:
I am @sheeri on twitter
My blog is at http://pythian.com/blogs/author/sheeri
My e-mail is cabral@pythian.com
Pythian became the first ever Sun Enterprise Remote DBA Partner — read the details at http://tinyurl.com/pythiansun.

Technocation, Inc can provide free web space for slides, videos and audio files. Their website is and you can e-mail them at info@technocation.org Technocation, Inc. is a 501(c) not-for-profit US corporation dedicated to providing educational resources for IT professionals.
http://planet.mysql.com has an aggregate of blog feeds relating to MySQL.
How to start a MySQL User Group
How to run a successful User Group
You can get your own free blog at www.blogspot.com or www.blogger.com.
The MySQL Forge Wiki is at http://forge.mysql.com/wiki. MySQL Forums are at http://forums.mysql.com and the mailing lists can be found at http://lists.mysql.com.
My mistake: http://sheeri.com/archives/13 and my response at http://sheeri.com/archives/14.
Wednesday conference material for you to edit and add notes and links to: http://forge.mysql.com/wiki/MySQLConf2009WednesdayNotes.
And a link to yesterday’s page, so you can edit that too: http://forge.mysql.com/wiki/MySQLConf2009TuesdayNotes.
And just for fun, a link to tomorrow’s page: http://forge.mysql.com/wiki/MySQLConf2009ThursdayNotes.