Tag: MySQL

ScaleArc Announces ACID-Compliant Caching Mechanism For MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle

Database load balancing software provider ScaleArt announced support for automatic cache invalidation, which it calls the world’s first ACID-compliant caching mechanism for dynamic data.

According to the company, the feature increases website and app performance by making it safe to cache data that frequently changes. This goes for things like shopping cart and user profile information for ecommerce apps.

The software tracks data changes to invalidate a cache entry so outdated data isn’t served. The company says it also provides the ability to handle more workload, reducing page download speeds and increasing site performance while protecting data.

“ScaleArc’s auto cache invalidation capability was recently put to the test through an extensive evaluation program conducted by a leading eCommerce company,” said ScaleArc. “The company tested the feature across two query sizes, measuring the query-per-second (QPS) rate and response time both with and without ScaleArc’s database load balancing software. Throughout the testing, the company observed that response time with ScaleArc’s software increased 6x to 12x, depending on the query response size.”

“For any company conducting business online, poor website or application performance can result in users failing to complete a transaction or abandoning the eCommerce site all together,” added CEO Justin Barney. “With ScaleArc’s database load balancing software and automatic cache invalidation, companies can now cache data that was previously believed to be too risky to cache. By now making this data safe to cache, ScaleArc can bolster business for companies with dynamic data, by reducing their page download times and increasing their overall site availability.”

In addition to shopping cart data and user profile data, ScaleArc says Financial data is a predominant use case for auto cache invalidation.

The load balancing software is available for SQL Server, MySQL, and Oracle. More here.

Image via ScaleArc

March 16, 2015
Percona XtraDB Cluster, Toolkit For MySQL and XtraBackup Included In Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

Percona recently announced that Percona XtraDB Cluster, Percona Toolkit for MySQL, and Percona XtraBackup are now included in the Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Long Term Support) release of Linux.

Percona XtraDB Cluster is also now certified for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform (RHEL OSP).

“Ubuntu and Red Hat are two of the most widely used Linux distributions, and the inclusion and certification assure users that they can implement their MySQL strategies on these platforms using Percona software,” the company says. “Percona software is currently included or certified for 65 percent of the OpenStack distributions with Ubuntu and RHEL OSP, according to the November 2013 OpenStack User Survey conducted by the OpenStack User Committee and Foundation.”

Percona XtraDB Cluster 5.5, Percona Toolkit, and Percona XtraBackup, are now included in the Ubuntu 14.04 LTS distribution, which you can find at the Ubuntu website.

“According to the OpenStack survey, Ubuntu is the most popular host operating system for OpenStack with 55 percent of deployments,” Percona says. ‘With the inclusion of Percona XtraDB Cluster in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and the availability of the Percona XtraDB Cluster Juju Charm for Active/Active MySQL, constructing a High Availability deployment of OpenStack is easier than ever. With Juju, Percona XtraDB Cluster can be deployed as a drop-in replacement for the MySQL charm in an Ubuntu 14.04 OpenStack deployment.”

Percona Toolkit and Percona XtraBackup are also included in the current testing release (Jessie) of Debian.

Image via Percona

May 21, 2014
Facebook, Google, Twitter & LinkedIn Team Up On WebScaleSQL

Facebook, Google, Twitter and LinkedIn announced a new collaboration among their engineer teams called WebScaleSQL.

A spokesperson for Facebook tells us that the companies are “working to share a common set of changes to the upstream MySQL branch that will be available via open source,” and “will include contributions from MySQL engineering teams at all four companies.”

WebScaleSQL will expand on existing efforts by the MySQL community, and we will continue to track the upstream branch that is the latest, production-ready release (currently MySQL 5.6), Facebook says.

So far, the engineers have set up a system for collaborating, reviewing code, and reporting bugs. One engineer can propose a change, and another from another company will review the code and offer feedback. If an agreement is reached, it will be pushed to the WebScaleSQL branch for everybody else. Each company can then further customize WebScaleSQL for their own needs.

The engineers have already made an automated framework that will run and publish the results of MySQL’s built-in test system, a suite of stress tests and a prototype automated performance testing system. They’ve also made changes to code structure and existing tests as well as performance improvements, and features to make WebScaleSQL scaling easier.

You can read more about the specifics here.

The companies intend to keep their WebScaleSQL work open and to continue to follow the most up-to-date upstream version of MySQL.

“As long as the MySQL community releases continue, we are committed to remaining a branch – and not a fork – of MySQL,” says Facebook software engineer Steaphan Greene.

Those who want to get involved with the project can check out this site.

Image via WebScaleSQL.org

March 27, 2014
Twitter Makes Its MySQL Work Open Source

MySQL is one of, if not, the best database management systems. It’s even better because it’s open source which allows anybody to make changes to it as they see fit for their own needs. Major companies use it to power their Web sites and it’s always nice to see these companies make their work with MySQL available to the public.

Twitter announced today on its engineering blog that its work with MySQL will now be available to all under an open source license. This is pretty big since Twitter is basically built on MySQL from the interest graph and timelines to user data and the tweets themselves.

Some of the work that Twitter has done with MySQL includes the following:

Add additional status variables, particularly from the internals of InnoDB. This allows us to monitor our systems more effectively and understand their behavior better when handling production workloads.

Optimize memory allocation on large NUMA systems: Allocate InnoDB’s buffer pool fully on startup, fail fast if memory is not available, ensure performance over time even when server is under memory pressure.

Reduce unnecessary work through improved server-side statement timeout support. This allows the server to proactively cancel queries that run longer than a millisecond-granularity timeout.

Export and restore InnoDB buffer pool in using a safe and lightweight method. This enables us to build tools to support rolling restarts of our services with minimal pain.

Optimize MySQL for SSD-based machines, including page-flushing behavior and reduction in writes to disk to improve lifespan.

It’s sure to be quite amazing to finally get a look at how Twitter uses MySQL. As Twitter themselves says, this can only help to foster innovation among those who use MySQL for their services. If you want to start getting a crack at how Twitter uses MySQL, check out the developer documentation.

As an extra bonus, the Twitter team will be speaking on Gizzard, their “sharing and replication framework on top of MySQL, at the Percona Live MySQL Conference and Expo on April 12 in Santa Clara, California.

As with all open source releases, you can get your mits on the code right now via github. There’s quite a lot here, but it’s well worth looking through. Who knows, you may even learn a thing or two.

April 10, 2012