Often enough I find MySQL benchmark results where the difference between results is 1% or even less and some conclusions are drawn. Now it is not that 1% is not important – especially when you’re developing the product you should care about those 1% improvements or regressions because they tend to add up. However with such a small difference it is very important to understand whenever this is for real or it is just the natural variance for your baseline test.

Take a look at this graph:
Click the image for a larger view)

This is the result for a simple in-memory, read-only “select by primary key” SysBench benchmark on dedicated physical hardware that is otherwise idle, simple 1 socket system. I tried to stabilize it as much as possible, for example …

I’m pleased to announce that my first book, the InnoDB Quick Reference Guide, is now available from Packt Publishing and you can download it by clicking here. It covers the most common topics of InnoDB usage in the enterprise, including: general overview of its use and benefits, detailed explanation of seventeen static variables and seven dynamic variables, load testing methodology, maintenance and monitoring, as well as troubleshooting and useful analytics for the engine. The current version of MySQL ships with InnoDB as the default table engine, so whether you program your MySQL enabled applications with PHP, Python, Perl or otherwise, you’ll likely benefit from this concise but comprehensive reference guide for InnoDB databases.

Here are the chapter overviews …