As I've been doing the last couple of years, I will be going to the O'Reilly MySQL Conference & Expo. In addition to the tutorial and the replication sessions that I will be holding together with Lars, I will be holding a session about the binary log together with Chuck from the Backup team which the Replication team normally works very close with.

This year, O'Reilly also have a Friend of the Speaker discount of 25% that you can use when you register using the code mys10fsp.

The sessions that we are going to hold are listed below. Note that I am using Microformats, which will …

MySQL Workbench 5.2 introduces a lot of new functionality and therefore this short tutorial will help you to get started quickly.

The Home Screen

The most prominent new addition in respect to previous Workbench releases is the new Home Screen. It allows you to access the main features of Workbench in a nice and easy way and is divided into 4 parts.

The upper Workbench Central panel features a few Links and Action Buttons to quickly access common resources.

The lower Workspace panel shows the main feature sets, grouped horizontally.

• SQL Development allows editing and execution of SQL queries and scripts, create or alter database objects and edit table data.
• Data Modeling covers the EER Modeling functionality you might already be familiar with from previous MySQL Workbench releases.
• Server …

You want to use or to know more about Sun technologies? Join these Webinars to improve your knowledge and skills. You will be able to ask questions to Sun's experts.

• Mercredi 10 Février : Securité pour les applications Web. Pour les startups du Web, la protection et la sécurisation de leurs applications, de leurs données, et de celles de leurs clients est un véritable facteur clé de succès.  Ce Webinar couvre les différents challenges liés à la sécurité ainsi que les solutions associées telles que l'encryption, l'authentification, les certificats, la sécurisation du stockage et le stockage à tolérance de panne, les environnements étanches. Les architectes de Sun Startup Essentials présenteront des implémentations économiques basées sur des composents standards et ouverts tel qu'Apache, MySQL et ZFS. Ce webinar est …

Recently we have released Workbench 5.2.4 Alpha. This version has some new features, and amongst them there is Workbench Administrator plugin or WBA plugin for short.

The plugin aims to ease the managing process of server instances. What we offer with WBA is a simple way to check status, configure and control one server instance. Some parts will resemble discontinued MySQL Administrator.

And here is a short summary of what we will have in WBA:

• Start/Stop server
• Edit server configuration (my.cnf)
• Manage user accounts
• Monitor user connections
• Status/Server variables browsing
• Log browsing
• Dump/Restore

In this alpha we have implemented a subset, which targets local usage only. Remote management and administration is upcoming. The subset includes:

• Add new Server Profiles
• Start/Stop the Server
…

MySQL backup soon becomes an important matter when the database is used in production. The pain-point comes from the fact that while backuping the database is not available to respond to client requests anymore. With mysqldump - the standard tool for performing MySQL backups - and a large database the operation can go over many tenth of minutes if not hours. If I am running my business on line this is simply not acceptable.

The classical approach to workaround this problem is to take advantage of MySQL replication. I set up a master/slave configuration where the slave acts as copy of the master. Then, when needed, I run mysqldump on the slave without any service interruption on the master.

But ZFS snapshosts bring a new straightforward approach that avoids the pain and the complexity of a master/slave replication.

Snapshots are a key feature of ZFS that allows me to save a copy of …

For anybody interested in trying out our new MySQL Workbench 5.2 Alpha2 I have prepared a short Quick-Tour that will show you the most important steps to successfully use WB to query your databases.

Manage Your Connections

MySQL Workbench 5.2 introduces a new Home Page that makes it very easy to access all your Database Connections and EER Models. It features the Workbench Central Panel, the Database Connections Panel and the Model Files Panel.

In order to be able to connect to your  MySQL server you have to create a new Database Connection so MySQL Workbench knows about your server instance. Follow the steps shown below to create your first Database Connection.

Click on the screen shot to see it at full size.

Connecting to and Working with the MySQL Server

Once you have created your …

Everybody attending the MySQL Users Conference this year please mark your calenders! This is your chance to become a MySQL schema design expert as well as learn how to use Workbench from the experts.

We are going to do a free Workshop called “Introduction to Data Modeling with MySQL Workbench” on Tuesday - Thursday 3 - 4:30 PM in the Santa Clara Ballroom.

Some of the topics that will be covered:

• Database Schema Design
  • Get familiar with common concepts of database schema design
  • Learn to avoid typical mistakes (do-s & don’t-s)
  • Tricks how to resolve typical problems
  • Performance-tune your schemata

• MySQL Workbench
  • Get introduced to MySQL Workbench
  • Learn how to use …

John Goulah wrote a nice quick tutorial to MySQL Sandbox.
Thanks, John!

Yesterday there was a short discussion on our public IRC channel (#workbench on freenode). It was about how Workbench handles Foreign-Key-Names.

Especially if you intend to use Synchronization feature (available in SE edition only) its good to have names for FKs (and their coresponding Indices). Workbench does that by default if you’re using the Relationship-tools (Hotkeys 1 to 6 when canvas is focused). But if you prefer to create your FKs in a not-so-visual way (entering the values on the FK-Tab in the table-Editor) you are on your own when it comes to naming your FKs. Though Workbench initially only accepts creating keys after you typed a name into the name-field theres still the possibility to rename the FK later to even empty names. If you try to create empty named FKs on a MySQL Server the server will generate a name for the key.

If you want to change FK names later, when your model has already grown to a size, where …