Tag Archives: MySQL

Will Oracle offer MySQL DBaaS?

10 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by in General, Oracle, Technology

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 So Oracle have determined to become a cloud solution vendor. This includes offering DBaaS, with several options being offered  built on the core Oracle database. But Oracle also owns MySQL, as a foot hold into the more open source centric community. Which brings us to our question, will Oracle offer the MySQL community a DBaaS? There certainly appears to be a demand for the capability with a number of vendors offering such a capability including Amazon RDS and ScaleDB (a more comprehensive list of vendors can be seen at Butler Analytics).

A superficial response would be, why have two DBaaS solutions? After all Oracle provides a migration tool which could be used to transition an on-premise MySQL solution so it can work on the DBaaS (about the transition see Oracle here). But DBaaS can eliminate the platform and basic configuration considerations, but it doesn’t overcome the means by which you can tune and optimise the database – this requires the skill and knowledge of your DBA and how many DBAs are practising experts on both platforms? It won’t address the SQL that may be wired into the code (particularly if the SQL include database hints) including the subtle differences in JDBC connector differences.

During Open World 15, Larry Ellison declared that he was going to take the battle to Amazon when it comes to cloud services. By offering MySQL as a DBaaS it would certainly be going toe to toe with RDS. At the same time opening new entry level cloud offering.

It is worth also considering the fact that a lot of the uptake of Oracle cloud solutions have SaaS solutions aren’t the traditional large on premise organisations for the main, but the midsized businesses that see SaaS as a means to get enterprise solutions for a fraction of the cost of running (or trying to run) themselves. It is these organisations who will probably also want to leverage MySQL to get the smaller footprint services running such as web front ends running on solutions such as Drupal or WordPress.

SQL Static Code analysis for MySQL

05 Thursday Sep 2013

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With MySQL now capable of features such as stored procedures and functions the need for tooling to support SQL code quality is greater than ever. A number of tools provide editors with syntax support and all the fancy features you’d expect from a modern IDE (see Toad as a leading product).

However the means to assess the quality of the procedures or scripts written for MySQL or the divergence from ISO standards doesn’t exist, although plenty of options exist for T-SQL (MS SQL Server), PL/SQL (Oracle) and even some tooling for DB2 and Informix.

The value of the static analysis tool means you can implement quality measures, controls and reporting through Continuous Integration tooling such as Jenkins, Sonar etc. All of which is a little ironic when you consider a lot of energy in CI (and Continuous Delivery appears to come from the open source community) which usually supports MySQL as one of the 1st options for databases.

Does this mean there is a gap in the market? Such capabilities dont seem to be in the MySQL WorkBench roadmap. Would love to know what people think?

Of course if you can support MySQL, then the offshoots such as MariaDB wouldn’t be too difficult.

Book Review – MySQL Workbench: Data modelling & Development by Michael McLaughlin

02 Friday Aug 2013

Posted by in Book Reviews, Books, General, Technology

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MySQL Workbench Data Modeling and Development

MySQL Workbench Data Modeling and Development

Having reviewed several books recently, and currently working on another book – I was offered the chance to look at MySQL Workbench: Data Modelling & Development by Michael McLaughlin which I took up as I was interested to know more about the Workbench tool (despite having worked with MySQL on and off for about 10 years, I’ve only really used command line and SQL editors or Eclipse plugins when working with MySQL).

From a pure readability perspective, this is undoubtedly technically well written. My difficulty with the book comes from the style, and presumed level of intelligence of the reader.  The difficulty comes from several perspectives’ firstly the author can feel a little condescending, to illustrate my point on page 180 the book says ‘Select Schemata step (that’s a fancier word for the fancy word schema) ‘.  Do you really need such a statement? Further the book spends the best part of the first 100 pages on walking through UI based installers for Windows 7, Linux (Debian and Fedora), and Mac OS X.  Although the look and feel of these installers will differ slightly, aside from some of the environmental considerations (configuring your hosts file for example) the installation process is consistent enough (and obvious enough given it is UI wizards) to only need to explain the end to end process for one platform, and then just address the differences for the other platforms, not repeat the entire process.  The only blessing in these first couple of chapters the author has thought to highlight a few common install issues and their resolutions (addressing my classic complaint people only think about the happy path). During the installation, the book makes reference to the use of DNS, but I don’t believe the use of DNS in a production environment is particularly well explained.

Having waded through to chapter 3 we can get started with the modelling aspect of the workbench. The chapter sets out first to explain some modelling concepts – starting with Object Orientation (OO) but doesn’t do a great job of it, starting out making reference to a number principles but then talking about the ‘principle of the one’, given my experience I did understand what the author was trying to express but, for someone experienced it could have been more simply expressed.  after OO, Normalisation is explained, and what defines the different levels of normalisation, but not the mechanics that can be followed to go from the levels of normalisation (something I was taught over 20 years ago).  Given that book talks about modelling,  I had expected the book to at-least touched upon other modelling approaches used for delivering the needs of data warehousing (star schemas etc), but his didn’t even obtain an aside.  Having spent nearly 100 image heavy pages on installation, all of these concepts are introduced in a single very text heavy chapter, which feels like we’ve swung too far the other way.

As the book goes on into development aspects it errs away from addressing SQL at all, and focuses entirely on designing with INNODB table behaviours.  Admittedly INNODB is the common engine (and the default assumed behaviour when thinking about database tables) but isn’t the only table type.  All of which is a shame as if you want to get the most out of MySQL the other table types have their value and benefits.

So, what value does the book bring.  Well for a student learning about databases for the 1st time (hard visualize when you think how pervasive the technology is today – even smart phones carry DBs now) this book along with a good guide on SQL and you’d be well on your way to getting some practical experience with MySQL.  to be honest the book would have setup far better expectations if it had been called MySQL Workbench for Dummies.  For the seasoned engineer who has worked with MySQL, understands database design then you might want to think twice about getting this book; that said I did pickup a few useful titbits – but getting them was hardwork.

Useful Links for the book: