Boston MySQL User Group

Jay Pipes gave an amazing tutorial on optimizing performance in MySQL by choosing your indexes and joins well. There were plenty of questions from the audience which he handled well, and in style. Over 50 people attended! And I really feel as though everyone learned a lot. The tutorial ran for 3 hours, but we were engaged until the last, and there were 15-20 people even at the bitter end.

Thanx, Jay! I can’t wait to see how the tutorial goes over at the MySQL Users Conference.

Pictures, video, slides and presentations will be up when we get to it.

Jay Pipes gave an amazing tutorial on optimizing performance in MySQL by choosing your indexes and joins well. There were plenty of questions from the audience which he handled well, and in style. Over 50 people attended! And I really feel as though everyone learned a lot. The tutorial ran for 3 hours, but we were engaged until the last, and there were 15-20 people even at the bitter end.

Thanx, Jay! I can’t wait to see how the tutorial goes over at the MySQL Users Conference.

Pictures, video, slides and presentations will be up when we get to it.

So You’ve Inherited a MySQL Instance

The first hour of a 2-hour workshop on what to do with a MySQL instance you’ve inherited. Very detailed, goes into real examples using shell prompts.

Unfortunately, the settings were incorrect on the video recorder, so only the 1st hour was captured. Presented at the Boston MySQL User Group on February 13th, 2006.

Special thanks to Tom C. for securing the MIT space.

google video

flash slides

pdf slides (this might be broken, please let me know)

worksheet

As always, stylistic criticism as well as content criticism is appreciated.

The first hour of a 2-hour workshop on what to do with a MySQL instance you’ve inherited. Very detailed, goes into real examples using shell prompts.

Unfortunately, the settings were incorrect on the video recorder, so only the 1st hour was captured. Presented at the Boston MySQL User Group on February 13th, 2006.

Special thanks to Tom C. for securing the MIT space.

google video

flash slides

pdf slides (this might be broken, please let me know)

worksheet

As always, stylistic criticism as well as content criticism is appreciated.

February Boston MySQL User Group

The February meeting of the Boston MySQL User Group will be held on Monday, February 13th (tomorrow!) at 7 pm. We have a new location, on the MIT campus. This means that there is close subway access AND plenty of FREE PARKING. The meeting is free, including pizza (with toppings) and soda.

To view details, see
http://mysql.meetup.com/137/events/4829769/?a=rem_c

The topic is “So You’ve Inherited a MySQL Instance” (which I *just* found out last week was not accepted for the MySQL Users Conference. Probably too basic of a workshop for the conference). It will be useful for beginners, and experience MySQL users will refresh their memory on what needs to be secured.

It has a unix focus, but most of the ideas can be applied to Windows users as well.

The February meeting of the Boston MySQL User Group will be held on Monday, February 13th (tomorrow!) at 7 pm. We have a new location, on the MIT campus. This means that there is close subway access AND plenty of FREE PARKING. The meeting is free, including pizza (with toppings) and soda.

To view details, see
http://mysql.meetup.com/137/events/4829769/?a=rem_c

The topic is “So You’ve Inherited a MySQL Instance” (which I *just* found out last week was not accepted for the MySQL Users Conference. Probably too basic of a workshop for the conference). It will be useful for beginners, and experience MySQL users will refresh their memory on what needs to be secured.

It has a unix focus, but most of the ideas can be applied to Windows users as well.

MySQL Backup Presentation

The Boston MySQL User Group was successful yet again! I was a bit worried about my presentation, that it would be too basic or folks would have wanted to see actual code and scripts, but it turned out well.

You may notice that the links at the side (http://www.sheeri.net if you’re reading a feed) include a category called “Presentations”. Currently the December presentation is linked to, direct to Google Video, and the slides from tonight’s meeting are also up in PDF format as well as macromedia flash. And, of course, tonight’s video, thanx to Mike Kruckenberg. Mike also took pictures!

Folks who were at the presentation — feel free to let me know what you thought of it. Folks not at the presentation — feel free to watch the video and let me know what you think. I’m especially interested for those folks who read the last article, if the talk goes more in depth and answers more questions.

(quick links for those reading feeds:

Mysql User Group Photos

Mysql Backups (slides, flash, 125 Kb)
Mysql Backups (slides, pdf, 2.0 Mb)

MySQL Backups presentation at the Jan. 9th, 2006 meeting.
Mysql 5.0 Presentation at the December user group meeting featuring Philip Antoniades of MySQL AB.
MySQL webinars from mysql.com
)

Why didn’t I think of this? Tom Limoncelli was nice enough to create a livejournal feed for this site — http://www.livejournal.com/users/sheericom_feed/

Direct link to add as a ‘friend’ if you’re logged in — http://www.livejournal.com/friends/add.bml?user=sheericom_feed

Why didn’t I think of this? Tom Limoncelli was nice enough to create a livejournal feed for this site — http://www.livejournal.com/users/sheericom_feed/

Direct link to add as a ‘friend’ if you’re logged in — http://www.livejournal.com/friends/add.bml?user=sheericom_feed

The MySQL User Group meeting on Monday, January 9th will focus on backups — I will give a 30-45 minute presentation on backups and we will then delve into a discussion — how folks within the group are backing up, how they’re not backing up, how they’d like to back up. If there’s time, we’ll do a “lessons learned from backup horror stories”.

Afterwards, we’ll head a few doors down to Boston Beer Works for more chatting.

You can see a video of last month’s presentation by Philip Antionades of MySQL AB on the new features in MySQL 5.0 at Google Video:

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=Mysql+5.0+by+Philip+Antoniades

(we will video this month’s presentation but not the discussion)

More details, including the event location and directions, are at: http://mysql.meetup.com/137/events/

Any questions, comments, etc should be sent to me. We’re currently looking for a space better than North Station — something around MIT might be nice, and we’re trying to get an MIT grad student/faculty/staff member/organization to sponsor it. (We want a location that’s good for people driving AND taking the T, and when the Garden has an event, it’s not feasible to park there). If you can help out, please let me know.

(You may forward this announcement to other groups, lists, blogs, whatever.)

I’m quite excited about the presentation, as I’m writing down a lot of information from different sources that really wants to be together, but as far as I can tell is not yet, at least not in a public place.
Why didn’t I think of this? Tom Limoncelli was nice enough to create a livejournal feed for this site — http://www.livejournal.com/users/sheericom_feed/

Direct link to add as a ‘friend’ if you’re logged in — http://www.livejournal.com/friends/add.bml?user=sheericom_feed

The MySQL User Group meeting on Monday, January 9th will focus on backups — I will give a 30-45 minute presentation on backups and we will then delve into a discussion — how folks within the group are backing up, how they’re not backing up, how they’d like to back up. If there’s time, we’ll do a “lessons learned from backup horror stories”.

Afterwards, we’ll head a few doors down to Boston Beer Works for more chatting.

You can see a video of last month’s presentation by Philip Antionades of MySQL AB on the new features in MySQL 5.0 at Google Video:

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=Mysql+5.0+by+Philip+Antoniades

(we will video this month’s presentation but not the discussion)

More details, including the event location and directions, are at: http://mysql.meetup.com/137/events/

Any questions, comments, etc should be sent to me. We’re currently looking for a space better than North Station — something around MIT might be nice, and we’re trying to get an MIT grad student/faculty/staff member/organization to sponsor it. (We want a location that’s good for people driving AND taking the T, and when the Garden has an event, it’s not feasible to park there). If you can help out, please let me know.

(You may forward this announcement to other groups, lists, blogs, whatever.)

I’m quite excited about the presentation, as I’m writing down a lot of information from different sources that really wants to be together, but as far as I can tell is not yet, at least not in a public place.
This article is somewhat long. Interestingly, as there is much to talk about besides the mechanics of each backup option. I wonder what I’d need to do to make this into a white paper or an article?

The backup presentation was finished last night. I may decide to go back and put some extra stuff in there, but that would be syntax and code and stuff. The logic is all in there, and the notes have been printed. I will post the slides (in .pdf and .swf (flash, the file is very small that way) formats) after the talk on Monday, as I may yet revise them.

I am very excited about one slide in particular, and I’ll share it here. It’s really a slide that I end with, but I feel as though it’s a great starting point as well as a summary point. I haven’t seen this information encapsulated this way before, so here goes:

Comparison Table of MySQL Backup Methods

Continue reading “MySQL Backup Presentation”

Boston MySQL User Group: Backups!

The MySQL User Group meeting on Monday, January 9th will focus on backups — I will give a 30-45 minute presentation on backups and we will then delve into a discussion — how folks within the group are backing up, how they’re not backing up, how they’d like to back up. If there’s time, we’ll do a “lessons learned from backup horror stories”.

Afterwards, we’ll head a few doors down to Boston Beer Works for more chatting.

You can see a video of last month’s presentation by Philip Antionades of MySQL AB on the new features in MySQL 5.0 at Google Video:

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=Mysql+5.0+by+Philip+Antoniades

(we will video this month’s presentation but not the discussion)

More details, including the event location and directions, are at: http://mysql.meetup.com/137/events/

Any questions, comments, etc should be sent to me. We’re currently looking for a space better than North Station — something around MIT might be nice, and we’re trying to get an MIT grad student/faculty/staff member/organization to sponsor it. (We want a location that’s good for people driving AND taking the T, and when the Garden has an event, it’s not feasible to park there). If you can help out, please let me know.

(You may forward this announcement to other groups, lists, blogs, whatever.)

I’m quite excited about the presentation, as I’m writing down a lot of information from different sources that really wants to be together, but as far as I can tell is not yet, at least not in a public place.

Why didn’t I think of this? Tom Limoncelli was nice enough to create a livejournal feed for this site — http://www.livejournal.com/users/sheericom_feed/

Direct link to add as a ‘friend’ if you’re logged in — http://www.livejournal.com/friends/add.bml?user=sheericom_feed

Why didn’t I think of this? Tom Limoncelli was nice enough to create a livejournal feed for this site — http://www.livejournal.com/users/sheericom_feed/

Direct link to add as a ‘friend’ if you’re logged in — http://www.livejournal.com/friends/add.bml?user=sheericom_feed

The MySQL User Group meeting on Monday, January 9th will focus on backups — I will give a 30-45 minute presentation on backups and we will then delve into a discussion — how folks within the group are backing up, how they’re not backing up, how they’d like to back up. If there’s time, we’ll do a “lessons learned from backup horror stories”.

Afterwards, we’ll head a few doors down to Boston Beer Works for more chatting.

You can see a video of last month’s presentation by Philip Antionades of MySQL AB on the new features in MySQL 5.0 at Google Video:

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=Mysql+5.0+by+Philip+Antoniades

(we will video this month’s presentation but not the discussion)

More details, including the event location and directions, are at: http://mysql.meetup.com/137/events/

Any questions, comments, etc should be sent to me. We’re currently looking for a space better than North Station — something around MIT might be nice, and we’re trying to get an MIT grad student/faculty/staff member/organization to sponsor it. (We want a location that’s good for people driving AND taking the T, and when the Garden has an event, it’s not feasible to park there). If you can help out, please let me know.

(You may forward this announcement to other groups, lists, blogs, whatever.)

I’m quite excited about the presentation, as I’m writing down a lot of information from different sources that really wants to be together, but as far as I can tell is not yet, at least not in a public place.

First Boston MySQL User Group Meeting

The first Boston MySQL User Group meeting went swimmingly. About 1/2 the people who RSVP’s yes or maybe showed up, which meant that the fine Optaros folks hosting us (thanx again to Stephen Walli) got pizza as a thank-you gift.

My boss offered me a ride home, otherwise I would have taken Stephen up on his offer to get a beer. Next time, definitely — I’ll just go into work later, and not be tempted by a ride home.

The demographics of the group was really amazing:

about 15% female
those with no experience with any database
those with experience with databases but not MySQL
those who’ve been using MySQL for weeks
those who’ve been using MySQL for months
those who’ve been using MySQL for years
those who are trying to convince their company to switch
about 10% Indian
about 20% other-Asian
(I didn’t notice anyone that was recognizably Hispanic or black)
job titles ranging from developer, dba, all the way up to the vice president and president level
The publishing sector was represented by O’Reilly, Addison-Wesley (which is owned by Pearson, which handles the MySQL Press imprint), and Apress. O’Reilly and Apress solicited authors.

Corrections always welcome, and special thanks to Mike Kruckenberg, and Mark Rubin of MySQL AB.

I cannot wait for next month. . .

To contact me via e-mail:

awfief@gmail.com
To contact me via e-mail:

awfief@gmail.com
To contact me via e-mail:

awfief@gmail.com
Having used Oracle, DB2, Postgres, Sybase, Informix, and MSSQL, I always enjoyed that MySQL just named everything “MySQL”. Sure, it can get confusing — there’s MySQL the server, MySQL the client, MySQL the database instance. . . .MySQL the flamethrower (the kids love this one). . . .But seriously, the ‘big guys’ have all this complicated jargon for really simple ideas.

MySQL has joined them. Granted, I’d been out of the MySQL world for about a year, and some wonderful things have happened in that year. Even a year ago, the company I worked for wasn’t using the most recent software nor taking advantage of all the features their versions of MySQL did have to offer. But I digress.

I’ve been working on MySQL knowledge, particularly with the free webinars. Today I attended the “MySQL Network and MySQL 5.0” webinar, where I learned that MySQL is packaging (better) software, support, tools, access to developers, and a knowledgebase into what they call “MySQL Network.” I was completely unclear on the concept of MySQL Network from the description, and from the name I figured it would have something to do with technical networking, not business to business networking.

Meanwhile, yesterday I realized that the “Pluggable Storage Engines” in MySQL just mean “you can use different table types, and turn off the ones you don’t want to use.” I was familiar with the concept, but not the buzz-phrase used to describe it.
To contact me via e-mail:

awfief@gmail.com
To contact me via e-mail:

awfief@gmail.com
Having used Oracle, DB2, Postgres, Sybase, Informix, and MSSQL, I always enjoyed that MySQL just named everything “MySQL”. Sure, it can get confusing — there’s MySQL the server, MySQL the client, MySQL the database instance. . . .MySQL the flamethrower (the kids love this one). . . .But seriously, the ‘big guys’ have all this complicated jargon for really simple ideas.

MySQL has joined them. Granted, I’d been out of the MySQL world for about a year, and some wonderful things have happened in that year. Even a year ago, the company I worked for wasn’t using the most recent software nor taking advantage of all the features their versions of MySQL did have to offer. But I digress.

I’ve been working on MySQL knowledge, particularly with the free webinars. Today I attended the “MySQL Network and MySQL 5.0” webinar, where I learned that MySQL is packaging (better) software, support, tools, access to developers, and a knowledgebase into what they call “MySQL Network.” I was completely unclear on the concept of MySQL Network from the description, and from the name I figured it would have something to do with technical networking, not business to business networking.

Meanwhile, yesterday I realized that the “Pluggable Storage Engines” in MySQL just mean “you can use different table types, and turn off the ones you don’t want to use.” I was familiar with the concept, but not the buzz-phrase used to describe it.
To contact me via e-mail:

awfief@gmail.com
Having used Oracle, DB2, Postgres, Sybase, Informix, and MSSQL, I always enjoyed that MySQL just named everything “MySQL”. Sure, it can get confusing — there’s MySQL the server, MySQL the client, MySQL the database instance. . . .MySQL the flamethrower (the kids love this one). . . .But seriously, the ‘big guys’ have all this complicated jargon for really simple ideas.

MySQL has joined them. Granted, I’d been out of the MySQL world for about a year, and some wonderful things have happened in that year. Even a year ago, the company I worked for wasn’t using the most recent software nor taking advantage of all the features their versions of MySQL did have to offer. But I digress.

I’ve been working on MySQL knowledge, particularly with the free webinars. Today I attended the “MySQL Network and MySQL 5.0” webinar, where I learned that MySQL is packaging (better) software, support, tools, access to developers, and a knowledgebase into what they call “MySQL Network.” I was completely unclear on the concept of MySQL Network from the description, and from the name I figured it would have something to do with technical networking, not business to business networking.

Meanwhile, yesterday I realized that the “Pluggable Storage Engines” in MySQL just mean “you can use different table types, and turn off the ones you don’t want to use.” I was familiar with the concept, but not the buzz-phrase used to describe it.
The first Boston MySQL User Group meeting went swimmingly. About 1/2 the people who RSVP’s yes or maybe showed up, ) got pizza as a thank-you gift.

My boss offered me a ride home, definitely — I’ll just go into work later, and not be tempted by a ride home.

The demographics of the group was really amazing:

about 15% female
those with no experience with any database
those with experience with databases but not MySQL
those who’ve been using MySQL for weeks
those who’ve been using MySQL for months
those who’ve been using MySQL for years
those who are trying to convince their company to switch
about 10% Indian
about 20% other-Asian
(I didn’t notice anyone that was recognizably Hispanic or black)
job titles ranging from developer, dba, all the way up to the vice president and president level
The publishing sector was represented by O’Reilly, Addison-Wesley (which is owned by Pearson, which handles the MySQL Press imprint), and Apress. O’Reilly and Apress solicited authors.

Corrections always welcome, and special thanks to Mike Kruckenberg, and Mark Rubin of MySQL AB.

I cannot wait for next month. . .

I did it!

I did it!
Well, there are 32 people plus myself interested in a Boston MySQL meetup.

So I did it:

http://mysql.meetup.com/137/

Please join if you’re interested. (feel free to link, pass on, etc).

SolidDB is free & open source
expire_logs_days

SolidDB is free & open source
expire_logs_days

SolidDB is free & open source
expire_logs_days
This script reads standard input and will send out e-mail to specified recipients. It is exceedingly good for piping commands to, particularly within cron or at.

Change the first line to your location of perl, and change the location of the sendmail binary if it’s not /usr/lib/sendmail.

Run mailif -H to see all the options. I have no idea who originally wrote this script. The only reference I can find on the web is:
http://sage-web.sage.org/mailarchive/sage-members-archive/2003/msg01357.html

The script can be copied and pasted from there.

SolidDB is free & open source
expire_logs_days

SolidDB is free & open source
expire_logs_days
This script reads standard input and will send out e-mail to specified recipients. It is exceedingly good for piping commands to, particularly within cron or at.

Change the first line to your location of perl, and change the location of the sendmail binary if it’s not /usr/lib/sendmail.

Run mailif -H to see all the options. I have no idea who originally wrote this script. The only reference I can find on the web is:
http://sage-web.sage.org/mailarchive/sage-members-archive/2003/msg01357.html

The script can be copied and pasted from there.

SolidDB is free & open source
expire_logs_days
This script reads standard input and will send out e-mail to specified recipients. It is exceedingly good for piping commands to, particularly within cron or at.

Change the first line to your location of perl, and change the location of the sendmail binary if it’s not /usr/lib/sendmail.

Run mailif -H to see all the options. I have no idea who originally wrote this script. The only reference I can find on the web is:
http://sage-web.sage.org/mailarchive/sage-members-archive/2003/msg01357.html

The script can be copied and pasted from there.
I did it!
Well, case there are 32 people plus myself interested in a Boston MySQL meetup.

So I did it:

http://mysql.meetup.com/137/

Please join if you’re interested. (feel free to link, pass on, etc).