June 19, 2005

ONLamp has published an article showing how to use replication to perform a clean backup of a running MySQL database without having to bring the database server down. This is done by setting up a separate server as a replica and then once a day turning replication off to make a clean backup. After the backup, replication is restarted and replica automatically synchronizes with the master in order to obtain any changes. This article gives you the commands and scripts to get this working quickly and easily.

April 22, 2005

A number of reports have been posted from the MySQL Users Conference 2005, with a lot of details about MySQL 5.0 and the forthcoming MySQL 5.1, new database clustering features, and more. If the MySQL database is part of your IT environment, you should probably take a look at the information presented. The conference presentations and slides are filled with tons of useful information that any MySQL administrator or developer will want to know about.

April 2, 2005

XML.com takes a look at the current state of native XML databases. See how they compare to standard relational databases and XML-enabled relational databases.

March 15, 2005

MadPenguin.org interviewed Josh Burkus, one of the core developers of the open source PostgreSQL database. Josh talks about the highlights of new PostgreSQL 8.0, the recent project backing by Fujitsu, and features in upcoming versions including PostgreSQL 8.1. Other topics include replication, clustering, bit-mapped indexes, new advanced indexing, two-phase commit, and stored procedures.

February 15, 2005

MySQL has updated its pricing, licensing, and support policies with the goal of making its database more attractive to corporate customers while still staying on good terms with the open source community. The biggest change for corporate users appears to be a new yearly licensing fee option that allows corporate users to get support while using the database under the GPL license.

February 14, 2005

AMD has announced that it will begin shipping the Opteron 852, 252, and 152. These chips run at 2.6 GHz and feature 1 GHz HyperTransport bus. The previous top of the line Opterons ran at 2.4 GHz and had a 800 MHz HyperTransport bus. The new chips also add SSE3 instructions that speed up multimedia operations such as encoding video.

In related news, AnandTech has pit the new Opteron 252 against the Intel Xeon 3.6/2MB in a database performance showdown.

February 9, 2005

NewsForge has just posted two articles comparing MySQL performance under FreeBSD 4.11, FreeBSD 5.3, NetBSD 2.0, Linux 2.4, Linux 2.6, Solaris 10 x86, and OpenBSD 3.6 on both single CPU and dual CPU servers. The first article describes the benchmarking procedure along with tuning parameters for the various operating systems. The second article has the detailed benchmarks. Overall, Linux 2.4 and 2.6 seem to do much better than all the others. Read the articles to find out more.

January 19, 2005

The PostegeSQL Global Development Group has released version 8.0.0 of the PostgreSQL ORDBMS. New features include: a native windows port, savepoints/nested transactions, exception handling inside functions, tablespaces, point in time recovery, and much more.