Psst, you want some client-side MySQL load balancing with and without sharding for your PHP application? PHP 5.3 has something to offer for you. It is free. It requires no to very little changes to your applications. It is open source but works with closed source applications as well. You won’t find this information in any book, because some book authors still do not cover "mysqlnd". Read on for 30+ lines of PHP to add round-robin connection load balancing and, 70+ lines of PHP to add MySQL master slave replication or sharding support to your application without changing the application. Black magic from Manmuckiel.

The goal

Recently I was forced to benchmark a mysqlnd plugin on Windows. X-Debug was no help. It worked flawless on Windows but it can’t tell you what goes on inside a PHP user space API call, for example, you will not know how much time mysqli_query() spends reading a result set. Very Sleepy is nice and the latest Microsoft Visual Studio profiler are probably wonderful but any of those external profiling tools did give me too fine-grained information. Also, they are external profiler which means you have to install extra software.

The mysqlnd statistics didn’t help me either. I didn’t need any aggregated values, I was curios if a certain function was the bottleneck. The solution:

• extra statistics for critical sections in the plugin using the mysqlnd statistics framework (C coding)
• dump profiling …

Recently I was forced to benchmark a mysqlnd plugin on Windows. X-Debug was no help. It worked flawless on Windows but it can’t tell you what goes on inside a PHP user space API call, for example, you will not know how much time mysqli_query() spends reading a result set. Very Sleepy is nice and the latest Microsoft Visual Studio profiler are probably wonderful but any of those external profiling tools did give me too fine-grained information. Also, they are external profiler which means you have to install extra software.

The mysqlnd statistics didn’t help me either. I didn’t need any aggregated values, I was curios if a certain function was the bottleneck. The solution:

• extra statistics for critical sections in the plugin using the mysqlnd statistics framework (C coding)
• dump profiling …

Did you ever want to see the database queries an arbitrary PHP MySQL application runs? It takes two free downloads and 62 characters to see them.

• Get PHP 5.3.4-dev
• Get PECL/mysqlnd_qc
• Add 19 characters to your configure line: --enable-mysqlnd-qc
• Add 43 characters at the end of applications source, e.g. using the auto_append_file configuration setting: var_dump(mysqlnd_qc_get_query_trace_log());
• Start your query analysis

array(329) {
  [0]=>
  array(8) {
    ["query"]=>
    string(27) "SET @@session.sql_mode = """
    ["origin"]=>
    string(1330) "#0 /home/nixnutz/Downloads/oxid/core/adodblite/adodbSQL_drivers/mysql/mysql_driver.inc(352): mysql_query('SET @@session.s...', Resource id #26)
#1 …

Did you ever want to see the database queries an arbitrary PHP MySQL application runs? It takes two free downloads and 62 characters to see them.

• Get PHP 5.3.4-dev
• Get PECL/mysqlnd_qc
• Add 19 characters to your configure line: --enable-mysqlnd-qc
• Add 43 characters at the end of applications source, e.g. using the auto_append_file configuration setting: var_dump(mysqlnd_qc_get_query_trace_log());
• Start your query analysis

array(329) {
  [0]=>
  array(8) {
    ["query"]=>
    string(27) "SET @@session.sql_mode = """
    ["origin"]=>
    string(1330) "#0 /home/nixnutz/Downloads/oxid/core/adodblite/adodbSQL_drivers/mysql/mysql_driver.inc(352): mysql_query('SET @@session.s...', Resource id #26)
#1 …

How amusing: an ancient write-up on the first PHP Kongress in 2000 edition written by one who later became a mentor of the autor of phpOpenTracker. How boring: a silver guy talking at the 10th aniversary of the conference about some 60% performace benefit for Oxid eShop, an example of a modern award-winning software, if using the mysqlnd query cache plugin (PECL/mysqlnd_qc). How confusing: the same silver guy calls his own benchmarks irrelevant and faulty.

Award-winning technology: Oxid loves the query cache

View more presentations on …

How amusing: an ancient write-up on the first PHP Kongress in 2000 edition written by one who later became a mentor of the autor of phpOpenTracker. How boring: a silver guy talking at the 10th aniversary of the conference about some 60% performace benefit for Oxid eShop, an example of a modern award-winning software, if using the mysqlnd query cache plugin (PECL/mysqlnd_qc). How confusing: the same silver guy calls his own benchmarks irrelevant and faulty.

Award-winning technology: Oxid loves the query cache

View more presentations on …

Slowly the power of mysqlnd plugins becomes visible. Mysqlnd plugins challenge MySQL Proxy and are often a noteworthy, if not superior, alternative alternative to MySQL Proxy for PHP users. Plugins can do almost anything MySQL Proxy can do - but on the client. Please find details in the slides. The presentation has been given today at the PHP track at FrOSCon.

The power of mysqlnd plugins

View more presentations on mysqlnd.

The biggest news is certainly the …

Slowly the power of mysqlnd plugins becomes visible. Mysqlnd plugins challenge MySQL Proxy and are often a noteworthy, if not superior, alternative alternative to MySQL Proxy for PHP users. Plugins can do almost anything MySQL Proxy can do - but on the client. Please find details in the slides. The presentation has been given today at the PHP track at FrOSCon.

The power of mysqlnd plugins

View more presentations on mysqlnd.

The biggest news is certainly the …

The first public mysqlnd plugin adds client side query result caching to all MySQL extensions of PHP (ext/mysql, ext/mysqli, PDO_MySQL). The cache is written in C. It does not change any of the PHP MySQL APIs and works with any PHP application using MySQL. Query results are stored on the client. Cached data can be stored in main memory, APC, Memcache, SQLite (theoretically - via SQLite …