MySQL

Schema-Free MySQL vs NoSQL

Amidst the cambrian explosion of alternative database engines (aka, NoSQL) it is almost too easy to lose sight of the fact that the more established solutions, such as relational databases, still have a lot to offer: stable and proven code base, drivers and tools for every conceivable language, and more features than any DBA cares to learn about.

Smooth Devoperations: Deploying Rails 3 with Moonshine

Here at Rails Machine, we have written, on occasion, about

Rails 3.0 Beta/Prerelease Available Now and How To Install It

rails-3-logo.pngToday, Rails core member Jeremy Kemper dropped the words that lots of ardent Rails developers have been waiting for: "Rails 3 beta is LIVE." It's true! Rails 3.0's first approved beta/pre-release version is now live and ready for you to install.

Cluster Monitoring with Ganglia & Ruby

A good monitoring solution can make or break an entire service - a well implemented one will enable you to forecast and plan ahead, as well as, quickly spot and debug problems when they arise. However, anyone that has worked with a cluster of machines will know that this is also a non-trivial problem.

MySQL slow query improvements

We’ve just pushed some updates to the MySQL slow query warning interface in the Brightbox control panel, which includes two main improvements.

Firstly, where the same (or very similar) query occurs more than once, they are aggregated together rather than being recorded as individual slow queries. The user interface displays the count so you can see exactly how many times this slow query occurred in the last 7 days.

Secondly, the full SQL query is now displayed, so customers now have more information with which to optimise their applications.

New: announcing the Brightbox SLA

Over the last few months, we’ve been seeing increasing number of requests about our SLA (Service Level Agreement) – do we have one? if not then why not? and so on.

We’ve been reasonably resistant to publishing an SLA until now, not because of doubts over our infrastructure or ability to deliver, but because of the minimal value we felt it would add for customers in the event of actual downtime. We’re a pragmatic bunch at Brightbox and like to avoid adding things just for the sake of it or “because everyone else does” :)

Conditional duplicate key updates with MySQL

In one of our larger Rails apps the sheer volume of data we process means we’ve had to rely more and more on direct SQL queries, denormalised tables and summary tables to speed things up. When updating summary tables we typically use ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE, a MySQL extension to INSERT statements since version 4.1, that allows a record to either be inserted or updated in one query.

For example, with this table:

InfiniDB, Infobright and MonetDB - Day 1: InfiniDB

We're taking a whistlestop tour of some of the column based storage systems out there for a project we're working on (where the use case seems to fit better with this form of storage rather than straight MySQL).

InfiniDB, Infobright and MonetDB - Day 2: Infobright

Day 2 of my tour of column based storage brings me on to Infobright Community Edition (ICE). The first impressive point was that based on my blog post of yesterday then I already had an email from Mark in Community Relations at Infobright offering help and advice - despite me calling him the wrong name (I was having a bad day!) then he was immediately helpful and also offered to get some of his team to look into my queries.

InfiniDB, Infobright and MonetDB - Day 3: MonetDB

Day 3 of my database exploration mission brings me to MonetDB. Binary downloads are available for Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu and (strangely!) Windows! If we still had any Windows users left here at HQ then it'd be a rare treat, but instead (as usual) our platform of choice (Centos 5) isn't directly available in binary form.

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