We have significantly improved the snapshot interface for doing MySQL backups using ZRM. This work has been released as part of ZRM 2.0. ZRM 2.0 has couple of snapshot plugins - Linux LVM and Solaris ZFS that uses the interface.

Changes in ZRM 2.0:
* Solaris packages
* ZRM clients for Linux (RPM/Debian) and Solaris
* Tested on Gentoo distribution
* Improved Snapshot plugin interface
* Solaris ZFS snapshot plugin
* Backup of remote servers using snapshots
* Asychronous checksum computation for improved backup performance
* Backup compression on the fly for logical backups

Download it from Zmanda downloads page and give it a try. I will write more about how to use the plugin interface next week.

Earlier today, Sun announced that it will be acquiring MySQL. This is an interesting turn of events in Oracle’s silent battle over MySQL. With Falcon still years away from being production-ready, and Oracle owning the most popular and stable storage engine for MySQL (InnoDB), what are your thoughts on this acquisition and the effects (both positive and negative) it may bring to end-users?

Several of the announcements can be found below:

http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/winds_of_change_are_blowing
http://blogs.mysql.com/kaj/sun-acquires-mysql.html/
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/080116/20080116005349.html?.v=1

We are working on Zmanda Management Console for our MySQL backup product line: Zmanda Recovery Manager (ZRM) for MySQL. ZRM for MySQL is an enterprise backup and recovery solution for MySQL.

Thought I’d pass along this note I received, that may be of interest to the MySQL addicts out there:

>> Sasha Pachev, whose book Understanding MySQL Internals was released
>> last month by O’Reilly, is leading an online seminar at MySQL AB on
>> “Improving query performance through a better understanding of the
>> optimizer”:
>>
>> http://www.mysql.com/news-and-events/web-seminars/sasha.php
>>
>> You can present Sasha with your own SQL queries during this webinar
>> and learn how to interpret output of the EXPLAIN command to improve
>> your performance. This webinar is also a useful accompaniment to
>> Understanding MySQL Internals, which contains extensive information
>> on EXPLAIN and the behavior of the optimizer exposed by it

MySQL stored procedures can use SELECT statements in their body, returning a data set to the caller. The manual also explains that multiple data sets can be returned from such a stored procedure.
For example, assume you have this stored procedure:

CREATE PROCEDURE p1(x INT, y INT)
    DETERMINISTIC
    BEGIN
        SELECT
            x ;
        SELECT
            x AS first_param,
            y AS second_param;
        SELECT
            x,
            y,
            x + y AS sum_xy,
            x * y AS prod_xy;
        SELECT *  FROM t1;
    END

There are four SELECT statements, with different headers, and a variable number of rows returned.
Early versions of DBD::mysql could not handle multiple data sets. Actually, prior to version 3.0004 they could not even handle one dataset from a stored procedure. Starting with version 4.001, single and multiple datasets from SPs are handled gracefully.
The trick is to call $sth->more_results after retrieving each dataset.
See the complete example at Multiple data sets in MySQL stored procedures

For those interested, the MySQL Users Conference and Expo includes a BoF about DBD::mysql on April 24^th at 7:30pm.

MySQL has joined Google Summer of Code 2007 and has launched its own Summer of Code branch.

Are you a skilled programmer? Do you use MySQL? Do you have ideas on how to improve it? (Do you want to use this cool logo in your blog? :) )
Here’s your chance to participate. Rush to read the announcement and the full instructions in MySQL Forge and then apply!.

I will be involved in two sessions at the MySQL Users Conference and Expo 2007.

• The Blackhole and Federated Storage Engines: The Coolest Kids on the Block, a four-hands presentation with Kai Voigt
• Lightning Rounds with Top MySQL Community Contributors where I will be the moderator among a group of valued contributors who will tell their experience with MySQL.

This year conference is going to be more user-oriented than ever before. Many sessions by MySQL employees will be co-presented by external users.

After a long period of preparation, my pet project is out! The Quality Contribution Program is here!
MySQL wants to reward its most active users who are contributing to the improvement of its products.
This is not a lottery, where you submit some contributions, and if you are chosen you get the prize. In this program, you start contributing, and when you reach a given level, you (and everybody else in the same position) will get a free subscription to MySQL Enterprise. The project rules say how much you should contribute to get a Basic, Silver, Gold, or even Platinum subscription.

MySQL AB’s Jay Pipes just sent me this notice:

The first-ever MySQL Camp unconference will be going on at Google Headquarters in Mountain View, this Friday through Sunday, 10th - 12th of November.

The camp is free and open to all participants. Focus for the conference is on developing and understanding MySQL source code and determining direction for future community developments on the MySQL server.

Similar to the successful BarCamps, MySQL Camp encourages open discussion, participation, and networking of attendees, with both pre-organized and impromptu sessions on MySQL source code internals, API development, community activism and issues, and advanced MySQL usage. Attendees are asked to come with ideas and a can-do attitude!

More information, and a registration page, is available on the MySQL Camp wiki site.

It’s somewhat draining hearing so many web 2.0 pitches which amount to ‘We’re going to work exactly like the tool you’re used to, but without synchronous server round-trips. Isn’t that great?!?’ No — that’s not great. It reminds of all the boom-startups who thought moving mail-order to the web was revolutionary … it’s just too obvious too really be intriguing.

So I didn’t have high hopes when I met a couple of folks working at one of my office-condo neighbors, and found out that their company (Kyube) is doing a web 2.0 CMS called SimplifyCMS. But they demo’d it for me, and I liked it a lot.

SourceForge, still a center of participation in the open source world, has one more day left of voting for the SourceForge Community Choice Awards. Here’s your chance to give your favorite project a bit more recognition for excellence. (Why not choose something that doesn’t walk away with awards every year?)

Hello, readers. With great pleasure I introduce the revamped and reworked O’Reilly Network Databases site. We’ve revised the site display to feature the knowledge, opinions, and wisdom of our expert webloggers as well as to give you better access to newer, fresher information.

Our goal is to update the site several times a week with new postings from our webloggers as well as original articles and links to useful information elsewhere.

We’re still in transition putting all of the pieces together (and gathering varied articles from several years of the O’Reilly Network to present in a meaningful and useful way), but we’ll have everything up and running in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, please feel free to let us know what we’re doing right, where we can improve, which projects and authors to watch and to recruit in the comments section here, or by mailing me directly at chromatic@oreilly.com.

Thanks for reading!