A couple of weeks ago, shortly after Vadim wrote about Percona Cloud Tools and using Slow Query Log to capture the data, Mark Leith asked why don’t we just use Performance Schema instead? This is an interesting question and I think it deserves its own blog post to talk about.

First, I would say main reason for using Slow Query Log is compatibility. Basic Slow query log with microsecond query time precision is available starting in MySQL 5.1, while events_statements_summary_by_digest table was only added in MySQL 5.6 which was out for …

We are nearing the one-year anniversary since MySQL 5.6 went GA – which is typically a good time even for the most conservative users to start thinking about upgrading. At this point there is a fair amount of practical use and experience; many bugs have also been fixed (1991 to be exact according to Morgan Tocker).

We also know that MySQL 5.6 has been used in some very demanding environments on a very large scale, such as at Facebook. We also know from the Facebook team, after kindly sharing their upgrade experiences, that it takes a lot of work to upgrade to MySQL 5.6. That’s where Percona can help!

In my webinar this Wednesday, “ …

It is wonderful to see some of my original pet peeves fixed in MySQL 5.7.3! It has not even taken 10 years

I remember when starting my work at MySQL Support that I would recommend using UNION ALL instead of plain UNION because it would not require duplicate elimination, and as such, would not require the creation of a temporary table in basic cases. Guess what? MySQL actually did it anyway. The learning experience from this incident was to never use common sense alone when thinking about MySQL – test and validate your assumptions because for one reason or another things may work differently from what “obviously makes sense.” I do not want to single out MySQL – this approach has helped me to be successful with problem analyses of all kinds of software.

The Multi Column IN optimization is another one that …

This Wednesday in our next webinar I’ll share how to configure a better-performing MySQL 5.6 server. You’ll lean a practical approach to generating a sensible configuration file that sets what is needed and omits what is not.

Why dedicate an entire webinar to the new configuration settings within MySQL 5.6? Mainly because the default configuration files that come with MySQL 5.6 are not designed for high volume production use, and I’ve seen many MySQL incidents caused by poor configuration. Hopefully my advice will save you the headache of tweaking the variables within MySQL’s configuration files in order to work within your organization’s unique business environment.

And while I’ll be …

Now with summer winding down and school back in session, we get into a very busy time with many great opportunities to discover more about MySQL with several excellent MySQL events.

At first I wanted to cover all autumn events here but if I did that this post would be far too long. So instead I’m focusing on a few wonderful MySQL events that I’m going to be involved with in September.

In a few short days we’re running Percona University at Washington, D.C. This free event on September 12 provides a great opportunity to learn about latest developments in the MySQL ecosystem as we at Percona see it. I personally will be speaking about …

Peter Zaitsev leads a track at the inaugural Percona MySQL University event in Raleigh, N.C. on Jan. 29, 2013.

Portland is a well-recognized hub for Open Source technologies in the Northwest, home to conferences such as OSCON and Open Source Bridge as well as hosts of OpenSQL Camp in 2009. As such it is a very natural place for our next Percona MySQL University event scheduled for June 17.

We run this event in partnership with MySQL Meetup at Portland organized by our own …

This Wednesday, May 15 at 10 a.m. Pacific, I’ll be leading  a Webinar titled, “Using MySQL 5.6 Performance Schema to Troubleshoot Typical Workload Bottlenecks.”

In this Webinar I will offer an overview of Performance Schema, focusing on new features that have been added in MySQL 5.6, go over the configuration and spend most time showing how you can use the wealth of information Performance Schema gathers to understand some of the typical performance bottlenecks.

Other areas of focus include:

• Bottlenecks with Disk IO
• Problems with excessive temporary tables and external sorts
• Excessive internal mutex contention …

“Best Practices for MySQL Scalability.”

If you have not already done so, I encourage you to register for my “Best Practices for MySQL Scalability” Webinar which will take place on May 1st at 10 a.m. PST. This will be an overview presentation, led by me and providing a high-level look at the components of MySQL scalability: application architecture, MySQL version and configuration, choosing hardware and operating systems. For each area we’ll investigate the most important best practices. Talk to you on Wednesday, and remember to prepare your questions in advance to get the most value out of the Webinar!

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More info: MySQL scalability depends on getting many things right including …

The Percona Live MySQL Conference & Expo 2013 was April 22-25 in Santa Clara, California. This was Percona’s second year organizing the conference and we were very pleased with the event and the feedback (check the #perconalive hashtag for a sampling of the great comments such as this from Tom Krouper or this from John Goulah or this from Jeremy Tinley or this from SF MySQL Meetup).

There are so many people involved with putting on this event that it’s impossible to list them all. The conference would be …

In preparing for this month’s Percona Live MySQL Conference and Expo, I’ve been reminiscing about the annual MySQL User Conference’s history – the 9 times it previously took place in its various reincarnations – and there are a lot of good things, fun things to remember.

2003 was the year that marked the first MySQL user conference independently organized by MySQL AB. It was called the “MySQL Users Conference” and took place at the Double Tree hotel near the San Jose airport with an estimated 500-600 people attending. Monty and David kicked-off the show with keynotes and I recall one of them saying something like, “12 …