Notes:
1. The script prints out elapsed time since transaction started, MySQL thread id, and the kill statement for transactions running longer than a defined threshold value, in seconds. Just copy, paster, and then execute the kill statement if you want to terminate the long transaction(s);
2. Adjust shellCmd variable;
3. Adjust longRunningThreshold value as needed. It is measured in seconds;
4. No special libraries/modules needed, as long as there is a working mysql client;
5. re module is used for regex processing. Good place to find examples of regular expression search and grouping. A status variable is used to assist locating MySQL thread id once a transaction running longer than the defined threshold is found.

import re, shlex, subprocess 

def runCmd(cmd):
    proc = subprocess.Popen(shlex.split(cmd), stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE, shell=False)
    out, err = proc.communicate()
    ret = …

Quick update to the framework that was released yesterday; I’ve added automatic graph generation. I chose DyGraphs due to the quick ability to enable support – the HTML is very quick and simply loads the CSV data. It has the same zooming features of Highcharts without the JS overhead.

Now when you run a load test you will get (in the output directory) a mixture of files: the main cumulative CSV and HTML file for the hostname that was tested, and then one CSV and HTML per report variable that was tested. This means you don’t have to drag the main CSV file into an alternate program or spend time parsing out certain variables one at a time to generate specific graphs.  I’ve also added support for limiting output of SNMP variables (LOAD,CPU,MEM). Head over here and download the update: http://code.google.com/p/quadrant-framework/

To enable …

It seems that everyone loves load testing these days. Problem is that everyone is using their own quick scripts, simple or complex, to drive their tests without the ability for other DBAs to duplicate those tests. Let’s say I write a great test and share my results and graphs on the blog – you want to run the same tests to see how your new DB servers compare in performance: this framework allows you to do that without duplicating any work or writing code. This is a basic release that will get the ball rolling. I’ve included some sample tests in the README file, so give them a try.

This codebase offers a user friendly framework for creating and visualizing MySQL database load test jobs. It is based around Sysbench, which is generally considered the industry standard load test application. The framework allows you to do the following:

• standardize your tests without requiring you to write one-off bash scripts to handle …

So I’ve been doing a fair number of automated load tests these past six months. Primarily with Sysbench, which is a fine, fine tool. First I started using some simple bash based loop controls to automate my overnight testing, but as usually happens with shell scripts they grew unwieldy and I rewrote them in python. Now I have some flexible and easily configurable code for sysbench based MySQL benchmarking to offer the community. I’ve always been a fan of giving back to such a helpful group of people – you’ll never hear me complain about “my time isn’t free”. So, let me know what you want in an ideal testing environment (from a load testing framework automation standpoint) and I’ll integrate it into my existing framework and then release it via the BSD license. The main goal here is to have a standardized modular framework, based on sysbench, that allows anyone to compare their server performance via repeatable tests. It’s fun to see …

I tried Python out a while ago, but stopped trying it to learn it after some major frustrations. Maybe I didn’t dig deep enough into it. I found the documentation hard to read, and the module layout seemed a little random at times. For some reason I found executing an external process and getting the results to be a little convoluted. (Since then I’ve learned to use popen(..).communicate())

I ended up messing with other languages to try to find one that suits my tastes, like Erlang and D. I read through 7 …

This is a reply to the blog post Poor man’s MySQL replication monitoring. Haidong Ji had a few problems using MySQLdb (could use the ‘dict’ cursor) and apparently he doesn’t want to much dependencies. I agree that using the mysql client tool is a nice alternative if you don’t want to use any 3rd party Python modules. And the MySQL client tools are usually and should be installed with the server.

However, since MySQL Connector/Python only needs itself and Python, dependencies are reduced to a minimum. Here …

Using MySQL replication slave(s) for reporting (with potentially different storage engines) is a very popular way of scaling database read activities. As usual, you want to be on top of things when replication breaks so end users can be notified and issues addressed. When Nagios, Zabbix, or whatever monitoring tools are not available or otherwise not accessible, there got to be another way. I wrote the following Python script for that purpose. The script can then be scheduled via crontab to check replication status in an interval you define. When things break, you get a notification email.

Notes:
1. I toyed with MySQLdb Python module for this task, but I don’t like the fact that I cannot easily retrieve values via column names in a MySQLdb cursor. If there is an easier way that I am not aware of due to my ignorance, I’d appreciate it if you could let me know.

I then tried pyodbc, but got a Python 2.4 compiling issue. I …

Update:

Commenter MarkR made a great point: if possible, use some packaging tools, to try to maintain proper dependencies, to the extent that is possible. Install from the source should be Plan B. So, try yum install MySQL-python first.

This is mostly for my own future reference. It’ll be icing on the cake if it helps you!

This is geared for CentOS or Red Hat. Use apt-get or other packaging tools for different flavours of Linux.

1. Get Python module setuptools called easy_install. I love easy_install, by the way, sort of like CPAN for Perl modules;
2. To install MySQLdb package, you would think easy_install MySQLdb would do. But that is not the case. I hope the developer would fix that. Instead, you need:

easy_install MySQL-python

3. If you have build errors, you may need:
yum install python-devel or yum …

A special extended edition of Tech Messages for 2011-02-10 through 2011-03-07:

• Nicholas Piël » Benchmark of Python Web Servers
  Nicholas has done an in-depth benchmarking of several WSGI servers in an effort to document their differences. He takes into account the type of server and which version of HTTP it supports.
• My 10 favourite Programming Quotes | Ginktage
  If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in. –  Edsger Dijkstra
• VMware vCloud Director …

This month is a special month. It’s not because of Valentines day or even the exciting day where we see groundhogs. No, this month is special because I’m have a book contest where you, the reader, get to win something free for doing absolutely nothing more than posting a comment saying that you want one of the several books I have available in the contest.

So without getting into boring details I’ll keep this short. I’ve been reviewing a lot of books lately and I think it’s time to get some books into people’s hands to enjoy themselves. This month the giveaways are all Python oriented.

So, all you have to do is take a look at the following titles and post a comment here saying that you want one of them. At the end of the month two readers will be chosen via a random list sorting python script I’ve whipped up for just this purpose. You will then get an email from the publisher who will send a brand new e-copy of the …