November 2008 - OurDelta builds for MySQL, 2009 training

Welcome to Open Query's newsletter, containing our training information, other related news, and tips. In this edition, we highlight OurDelta (free enhanced builds for MySQL), and note the upcoming PHP QA training, available custom training, and our 2009 course planning.

First of all, a grand thanks to the many among you who have given such positive feedback on the "High Performance MySQL" (2nd edition) book (http://openquery.com.au/resources/hpm), co-writing a book is a huge task and the other authors and I are very pleased with the great response literally from around the world! We're is about to see its second reprint, which is fairly rare for such specialised technical books.

OurDelta - Free Enhanced Builds for MySQL

James Purser of Open Source On The Air (http://osota.fosscasts.org) describes OurDelta as "a new distribution for MySQL". The OurDelta binaries have a number of additions (from the famous Google patches, and other sources), mainly involving commands and options to make tuning and maintenance of a MySQL server easier. A few examples:

- The slow query log can provides more information: on created tmp tables (memory and disk), sort operations (memory and disk), table scans (this was already possible, but now you can specify to only log a query if >N rows are scanned, so that queries using small tables no longer fill up the log, and output of the query plan (EXPLAIN).

- INDEX_STATISTICS keeps track of which indexes are being used and how much, show you now find out (by correlating with other INFORMATION_SCHEMA tables) which indexes are never (or infrequently) used.

- The mirrored binlog and fast master promotion features make easy work of replication failover in an environment with multiple slaves, or where a slave has to take over from a master.

- Various patches to improve server performance (specifically InnoDB) on machines with 4 or more cores.

OurDelta builds are neatly packaged, currently for RHEL/CentOS 4 and 5, Debian 4.0 (etch), Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy) and 8.10 (Intrepid), and accessible through YUM and apt-get repositories. The online documentation gets you going within minutes, and it's easy to stay up to date!
The current build is 5.0.67 with OurDelta patchset d7. Details of the patchset at http://ourdelta.org/patches and feature documentation at http://ourdelta.org/docs.

Open Query, which has been one of the initiators of the project, provides support for your OurDelta installation, and we will also be using the additional features in training setups. On-site consulting is from $150/hr+GST, remote consulting $100/hr+GST.

For more information and downloads, see http://ourdelta.org or contact us directly at http://openquery.com.au/contact

Quality Assurance in PHP Projects

You may have read about Test Driven Development, and tools such as PHPUnit and Selenium? Open Query has invited PHPUnit author Sebastian Bergmann back to Australia and teach his successful 3-day workshop on this topic. This time, the workshop is scheduled 8-12 December in Sydney.

For more detail and bookings, see http://openquery.com.au/training/php_project_qa

In-House (Custom) Training

We're seeing a lot of interest in custom training, sometimes off-site but generally at a client's own premises. Custom training allows the training to be tailored to your specific use of MySQL, and have more people benefit at a reduced cost. The base price is $2500 per day + GST, with up to 12 participants. Essentially you hire an expert trainer for one or more days, and the exact content is open - naturally most of it can be agreed upon beforehand, and corresponding materials will be provided.

For more details, see http://openquery.com.au/training/custom

2009 Public Training Schedule

After courses in Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and Auckland over recent months, the current period sees us booked with custom training and consulting engagements, followed by the Open Source Developers Conference (http://osdc.com.au), well-deserved summer holidays, and the Linux conference in Hobart (http://linux.conf.au).

New public course days are being scheduled from February 2009, and now is your chance to tell us what/when/where would suit YOU best.
The pricing per day is in the order of $475/575 + GST per person. We also have very special rates for students and educators.

Developer topics:
- MySQL Optimisation by Design
- MySQL Storage Engine Optimisation
- MySQL 5.0/5.1 Upgrade and Advanced Features

DBA topics:
- MySQL Installation, Security and User Management
- MySQL Backup and Recovery
- MySQL Storage Engine Optimisation
- InnoDB Performance Tuning

High Availability and Scale-Out:
- MySQL Scaling and High Availability Solutions
- DRBD and Heartbeat for MySQL Workshop
- MySQL Replication Workshop

For more information about these existing course days (and you can always sign up for individual days!), see http://openquery.com.au/training/schedule. We are also developing new content, and again your input is appreciated!

Tell us about your needs now at http://openquery.com.au/training/contact

Newsletter Subscriptions

You will shortly be able to control your newsletter subscription through the Open Query website at http://openquery.com.au/, and people who have been to one or more training days will also gain access to the special Alumni pages which include course materials and other information. Please login or register today! On the site will also find an increasing number of resources and links which you may find useful.

If you want to no longer receive this newsletter or other communications from Open Query (we do try to limit this to the absolute minimum actually, which is exactly why we started the newsletter so that all info is neatly rolled into one email), just let us know and we will honour your request.

Also, any suggestions or feedback about the newsletter are most welcome!
You can always contact Open Query via http://openquery.com.au/contact