Database changes pending

The new release of MySQL has finally been released with the version of InnoDB that supports our type of database structure – notably tables that have rather large data blocks.

I am at present testing this new version on my ‘sandbox’ machine at home, which is merrily replicating the main database and providing us (as it has done for nearly a year) with a hot standby in case of failure of this database.

If all goes well I shall probably upgrade the database of the live server on Saturday some time, since thats our quietest day. I hope that the downtime won’t be too long, BUT there will be brief outages throughout Saturday where the data is converted from the old to the new database type.

In theory, the new database table type is somewhere approaching ten to fifteen times faster and more scalable for our usage of MySQL, and provides transaction support – meaning that if something goes wrong things can be rolled back an no damage to the database occurs… To most people thats meaningless and it can be ignored. To us as admins, its pretty priceless and I will be able to sleep a LOT easier once its installed 🙂

The next step (which Heikki, the guy who writes InnoDB) is working on, which will also be greatly appreciated is Foreign Key Constraints, which will enable us to keep the data in the database consistent, which I suspect it is most certainly not at the moment… Things will become, from an admin point of view, much simpler. From a user point of view, this change should enable us to support a LOT more concurrent users before anyone notices any slow downs.

As always, any questions, feel free to ask 🙂

Steve.

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