A catchy headline, and I believe more accurate than Oracle Puts the Squeeze on SMBs with MySQL Price Hike (Network World) and MySQL price hikes reveal depth of Oracle’s wallet love [MySQL Jacking up MySQL Prices] (The Register). Slightly more realistic is Oracle kills low-priced MySQL support (again The Register).

First, let’s review what Oracle has actually done: they ditched the MySQL enterprise Basic and Silver offerings. For Oracle, that makes sense. Their intended client base is “enterprise” (high end, think big corporates) and their MySQL sales and cost structure reflects this. It’s not a new thing that came with MySQL at Oracle, because MySQL at Sun …

Yes, you read the title correctly — there are three editions of MySQL available, according to http://www.mysql.com/products/enterprise/server.html. Well, that page names two, and then of course there is the community edition….

From the manual page:

MySQL Enterprise Server is available in the following editions:

* MySQL Enterprise Server – Pro is the world’s most popular open source database that enables you to rapidly deliver high performance and scalable Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) applications.
* MySQL Enterprise Server – Advanced is the most comprehensive edition of MySQL. It provides all the benefits of MySQL Enterprise Server Pro and adds horizontal table and index partitioning for improving the performance and management of VLDBs (Very Large Databases).

How is “horizontal table …

The MySQL Enterprise Spring 2010 Release includes key improvements designed to help you proactively optimize MySQL performance and identify potential issues before they can become costly outages or slowdowns. In this webinar we will explore the new features of the MySQL Enterprise Monitor 2.2 that are designed to save DBAs and Developers time and effort in keeping MySQL systems running at the highest levels of security, performance and availability. Join us and learn about:

• How the MySQL Connectors can now be used to collect, aggregate and monitor MySQL query performance data
• How to quickly identify which queries are performing full table scans
• How to isolate your worst performing queries based on total execution counts, time, data returned, date/time, query content, query type, and more
• How to identify and drill down into line-level source code for specific query executions
• New …

I have been upgrading more MySQL database instances recently and have found a few more potential gotchas, which if you are not careful, can potentially be rather nasty. These are not documented explicitly by MySQL, so it may be handy for you to know if you have not come across this type of thing before.

Most of the issues are those related to upgrading MySQL instances which are replicated, either the master servers or the slaves. Some seem specific to the rpm packages I am using (MySQL enterprise or MySQL advanced rpms), though others are not.

Take care upgrading a 5.0 master when you have 5.1 slaves

It is not a good idea to run a mixed major version of mysql in a replicated environment so why would I be doing this? If you work in a replicated environment and have several slaves then it is recommended that you upgrade the slaves first. I work with quite a few slaves so the process of upgrading them all takes longer …

We’re continuing to see signs that the dominant GPL open source license may be fading from favor among commercial open source software players. The latest move away from the GPL comes from content management software vendor Alfresco, which is moving to the LGPL after originally releasing its code under the GPL three years ago. The reasoning for the shift, according to Alfresco CEO John Newton, is the company sees greater opportunity beyond being a software application, particularly given the emergence of the Content Management Interoperability Services standard. Alfresco won mostly praise for its move, and it does make sense given where open source is going these days.

I believe the emerging trend away …

The previous version, MySQL 4.1, instead, will be retired completely. It has ended its extended period. As such, it will be removed from the download page, and also from the download archives. Next year, if you want …

The previous version, MySQL 4.1, instead, will be retired completely. It has ended its extended period. As such, it will be removed from the download page, and also from the download archives. Next year, if you want …

The previous version, MySQL 4.1, instead, will be retired completely. It has ended its extended period. As such, it will be removed from the download page, and also from the download archives. Next year, if you want …

I had originally posted this on the 16th of September, but I had been changing hosting providers and such and it has managed to drop through the cracks.  So, if you didn’t see it before here it is..

I have long held the opinon that SSD (Solid State Disk) drives are going to be a major part of the database future. I just checked and I wrote a blog posting about them two years ago. I am not alone in this opinion.  It has long been realized that both I/O access speed and throughput increases have not kept pace with the increases in CPU power and the steadily decreasing cost of RAM. Storage space has increased, but both access speed and throughput performance have only had marginal increases in performance.

Solid state disks have long held the promise of lowered access speeds, especially when it comes to random access.  Even so, prices for SSD drives have been high and space small (compared to standard hard …

MySQL is proud to announce the MySQL Enterprise Fall 2009 Release!

The MySQL Enterprise Fall 2009 Release includes the MySQL Enterprise Monitor with the improved MySQL Query Analyzer - now with new correlation graphs for faster performance optimization. Join our webinar series and see a live demonstration of the new MySQL Enterprise Monitor and the improved Query Analyzer, hear about the new Advisor rules and support services and get live answers to your questions from our MySQL experts.

The "What's New in the MySQL Enterprise Fall 2009 Release - EMEA" web presentation will be delivered on Wednesday, September 16.

For those of you who speak Italian I'll deliver a local version of it on the Thursday, September 24 at 10am CET. Register and listen to it from the comfort of your home or office via this …