As I mentioned a few days ago, I’ve been working recently on documenting the Cluster utilities; I’m still working on ndb_config, but should get that into the Manual Real Soon Now™. In the meantime, here’s a tip I received from one of the developers. This generates a connectstring for use with data, SQL, or API nodes, using ndb_config, which you should be able to find in your mysql/bin directory:

ndb_config −−config-file=path/to/config.ini −−query=hostname,portnumber −−fields=: −−rows=, −−type=ndb_mgmd

For this to work, you need to have the Cluster management server running, with a viable config.ini at the location specified by path/to/config.ini.

Hope that someone finds this useful.

I’ve had an introductory article to MySQL Cluster 5.1 Disk Data published in the September 2006 issue of International PHP Magazine.

If you’re using Cluster or you’re interested in doing so, and you’ve not yet tried out MySQL 5.1, you’ll find that disk data storage makes MySQL Cluster more flexible, scalable, and cheaper to run than MySQL 4.1 and 5.0 Cluster. In the article, I’ve outlined some reasons why this is so. The article covers the basics of creating disk-based Cluster tables, and discusses some Disk Data do’s and dont’s. There’s also some info about some other improvements to MySQL Cluster that are being made in 5.1, as well as some diagrams and sample PHP5 code for accessing a MySQL Cluster. Just in case you’re not that familiar with setting up a MySQL …

Recently, MySQL Cluster developer and team leader Martin Sköld committed some major revisions and additions in the storage/ndb/ndbapi-examples directory of the MySQL 5.1 source. Although I don’t think these have yet been pushed out to the public 5.1 tree, I went ahead late last week and added them to the Practical Examples section of the NDB API Guide so that interested parties can take advantage of a number of corrections and other improvelements that Martin’s made.

There’s two new additions, also — here and here — these demonstrate for the first time in the Guide the use of the API with multiple clusters. You might find these particularly useful if …

Ever wonder what all those binaries with names starting in “ndb” were doing in mysql/bin? Not surprisingly, they’re MySQL Cluster monitoring, utility, and demonstration programs, and after a couple of fun-filled weeks of experimenting with them (and asking a few of the usual sorts of silly questions I’m know for asking in the right quarters) I’ve been able to document most of them in a new Cluster Utility Programs section of the MySQL Manual (I’ve linked to the 5.1 version, but they’re available in 4.1 and 5.0, too).

If you’ve not looked at these before, check them out. A couple of them — like ndb_waiter and ndb_desc — are handy for monitoring a MySQL Cluster or getting information about NDB tables and other Cluster data objects; others — such as …

I did a bunch of housekeeping in the MySQL Cluster documentation today.

Confession: I’m the bright light who came up with the term “SQL node” because I didn’t like “API node”. At the time, it seemed like a good idea, but as time has gone on, I’ve come to see the error of my ways. However, lots of people now use the term, so I guess it’s not a good idea to change it out from under them. So here’s what I’ve decided:

API node - Any application that accesses Cluster data. Basically this means any NDB API application.

SQL node - A subspecies of API node that provides an SQL interface to a Cluster. Basically, this means a MySQL Server that’s part of a Cluster. (mysqld itself isn’t an NDB API application, but the bits that let it talk to a Cluster use the NDB API.)

Also, ndbd processes were in the distant past referred referred …

The answer to the question posed in the title used to be, “Linux, Solaris, and Mac OS X - anywhere else, and you’re on your own, mate. And forget about running it on Windows.”

The answer is now more like, “If it’s one of the Unices, chances are that we support running Cluster on it. Windows still need not apply.”

In fact, it might be easier now just to list the platforms we definitely don’t support for using Cluster, which as far as I know are these:

• Minix
• Plan 9
• BeOS
• Windows

(To see what’s officially supported by MySQL for Cluster - and to what extent - check out this page that’s maintained by our illustrious Support Department: Supported Platforms for MySQL Cluster.)

However, if you can get a MySQL client running on one …