High Performance MySQL
Optimization, Backups, Replication, Load Balancing & More
By Jeremy Zawodny, Derek J. Balling
April 2004
Pages: 294
ISBN 10: 0-596-00306-4 |
ISBN 13: 9780596003067
(4) (Average of 4 Customer Reviews)
This book is OUT OF PRINT. Please consider the latest edition.
Book descriptionIn High Performance MySQL you will learn about MySQL indexing and optimization in depth so you can make better use of these key features. You will learn practical replication, backup, and load-balancing strategies with information that goes beyond available tools to discuss their effects in real-life environments. And you'll learn the supporting techniques you need to carry out these tasks, including advanced configuration, benchmarking, and investigating logs.
Full Description
- A review of configuration and setup options
- Storage engines and table types
- Benchmarking
- Indexes
- Query Optimization
- Application Design
- Server Performance
- Replication
- Load-balancing
- Backup and Recovery
- Security
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| Table of Contents | Index | Sample Chapter | Colophon
Book details
First Edition: April 2004
ISBN: 0-596-00306-4
Pages: 294
Average Customer Reviews: (4) (Based on 4 Reviews)
Featured customer reviews
Fantastic!, June 05 2008
This is not a How To book.
This is the book you get once you understand basic MySQL and your boss starts talking about disaster recovery, replication, hot spares, backup snapshots and performance.
Amazing coverage of advanced MySQL use. I've already worn out the spine on it and it's dog-eared 8)
I saw only 3 reviews on this. It really needs to be in every bookshelf owned by people in charge of operational support of this DB.
It's a "can't live without it" title for me, right there with DNS/BIND, CVS and the various unix and programming titles I own.
Great job Jeremy and Derek!
-v
MySQL on Steroids, March 01 2008
High Performance MySQL opens with a quick chapter describing various MySQL installation options including binary packages and compiling from source code. The next chapter describes the different storage engines available in MySQL and why you would want to choose one over another. This is the book's first hint of what you can do to improve database performance: picking the right table type.
Skilled software developers use benchmarking to gain insight into how their software is performing and database benchmarking should be part of that strategy. A brief chapter introduces some database benchmarking strategies and tools.
Chapters on indexing and query performance follow, describing some of the most important skills to master. Following that, replication and load balancing are discussed. Backup and recovery options are covered, as is the topic of security.
A somewhat thin trio of goodies rounds off the book in the appendices: the SHOW STATUS / SHOW INNODB STATUS commands, the mytop tool, and the phpMyAdmin user interface.
Overall, I found many possible areas for performance improvement that I had not thought of before. At 278 pages, a lot of material is crammed into this book. It's a quick read and if you're a MySQL admin or a developer using MySQL, you're bound to find something useful here!
A must for those that use MySQL on a regular basis, December 15 2004
If you interact with MySQL on a regular basis, High Performance MySQL should be the next book that you read. High Performance MySQL does a great job at covering techniques on benchmarking your current configuration and how to increase performance at 3 major levels: 1) database architecture, 2) server tuning, and 3) scaling horizontally (with multiple servers).
Database architecture is where it really begins. Zawodny and Balling did a great job explaining the different storage engines along with their advantages and disadvantages, working with transactions, how to get the most of your database through indexing and how to optimize query performance.
Zawodny and Balling also did an excellent job on covering server tuning. It just wasn’t a turtorial on ‘this is how you should modify your configuration files.’ The authors whent into great detail in explaining different hardware configurations, what to look for in RAID configurations and different filesystems, and how to solve various bottlenecks.
For the most part, the authors reserved a complete 60 pages of the book for Replicaiton and Load Balancing configurations. The authors provided several scenarios to choose from along with the advantages and disadvantages of each.
Enterprise-level MySQL, April 19 2004
High Performance MySQL is a good look at the issues faced by DBAs in high performance environments..
MySQL books to date have tended to be reviews of basic installation and configuration. This books assumes you have covered that ground already, a welcome departure.
The book takes an intermedite-level approach to topics such as indexing, replication, backup, and tuning.
On the positive side, the book is engaging and very readable. Although the material is, by nature, theoretical, the authors have taken effort to attach real-world examples to the concepts they are covering.
On the negative side, there were a few typos and grammatical errors in the book, such as a diagram referring to the 'NBD' storage engine (should read BDB). Perhaps one more trip through the editing desk would have been helpful. However, the material itself is comprehensive and accurate, and is not affected by these minor slips.
Overall, the books is recommended for DBAs who do non-trivial work with MySQL.
O'Reilly Staff Pick - January 2006
Anyone looking to understand the internals of MySQL and truly problem solve with the server would be a fool not to read High Performance MySQL cover to cover at least once. For a moderately small book, it packs an amazing punch. Seasoned users are able to get the most out of this book while beginners can use it as a wake up call to how far they can take their learning. This book does a wonderful job of singling out key parts of the internals in order to design better databases and queries. While MySQL continues to evolve, the information in this book will stay relevant for a number of years. Read more.
-- Ryan Grimm, Software Developer, Information Systems
Media reviews
"If you have a site (or sites) that require tuning, or just want to make sure that your database development practices won’t cause you growing pains down the road, this book is a necessity. Jeremy and Derek bring a tremendous wealth of knowledge together for a very concise, easy read that provides immediate benefits."
--Mitchell Pirtle, International PHP Magazine, February 2005
"I was somewhat anxious to crack open a copy of the book High Performance MySQL published by O'Reilly and written by Jeremy [Zawodny] and Derek J. Balling. With such high expectations, it would be easy to be disappointed with the content or level of the material in the book. Far from disappointing, High Performance MySQL was exactly what I had hoped it would be and more...I believe High Performance MySQL is an excellent choice for the MySQL administrator or developer not only looking to improve their database performance but also to improve his knowledge of MySQL."
Rating: Excellent
--Steve Suehring, Slashdot.org, October 2004
http://books.slashdot.org/books/04/10/13/2016211.shtml?tid=198&tid=221&tid=172&tid=6
"While there may be good books on MySQL development, it's nice to have a well-written book on MySQL administration. Zawodny and Balling certainly have the experience in this topic and in writing. It's definitely a book worth buying, and it's especially one that a MySQL administrator will find worth reading carefully and thoroughly. It's an excellent book for increasing your proficiency in MySQL."
--Russell Dyer, UnixReview.com, July 2004
http://www.unixreview.com/documents/s=9233/ur0407j/ur0407j.htm
"If you need performance, reliability and security beyond the standard configuration and need to maximize throughput, this is the book you will want to have at hand. 'High Performance MySQL' is one of the best optimization and performance books available for the intermediate to advanced user of MySQL--very highly recommended."
--Harold McFarland, Midwest Book Review, July 2004
http://www.midwestbookreview.com/rbw/jul_04.htm#harold
"'High Performance MySQL' is packed full of information and strategies that can take almost any site's MySQL installation to new levels of usefulness... Experienced web developers and MySQL administrators will find High Performance MySQL to provide them with some very good strategies."
--Jeremy Rogers, WebDevReviews.com, June 2004
http://www.webdevreviews.com/articles/24
"There are very few tech books I can read from cover to cover but this is one of them...Replication, load balancing, backup and a few other things. The type of things this book was written for. We have another HP UX machine sitting in the datacenter, unused. Perfect for experimenting. If you're someone like me, who uses MySQL and knows enough to make things work but wants to take it to the next level, this is the book to read."
--A Day Late, April 2004
http://www.daylate.com/archives/000336.html
