As users come to depend on MySQL, they find that they have to deal with issues of reliability, scalability, and performance--issues that are not well documented but are critical to a smoothly functioning site. This book is an insider's guide to these little understood topics.

Author Jeremy Zawodny has managed large numbers of MySQL servers for mission-critical work at Yahoo!, maintained years of contacts with the MySQL AB team, and presents regularly at conferences. Jeremy and Derek have spent months experimenting, interviewing major users of MySQL, talking to MySQL AB, benchmarking, and writing some of their own tools in order to produce the information in this book.

In "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.

Topics include:

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

Customer Rating:
Summary: MySQL on Steroids
Comment: 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!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: It could have been better
Comment: I'm Certified MySQL Associate and preparing for the next exams (Developer and Admin)... and I must say I didn't liked the book.

It offered nothing new for me... so if you're at a high level in MySQL it will not help you that much.

I saw some slides by Jeremy that were by far more informative and compact than the whole book.

To keep it short the complete title should have been: High Performance MySQL for MySQL beginners.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent resource for the beginniner and seasoned administrator alike
Comment: Having written LAMP-based web applications, I read High Performance MySQL hoping to gain a deeper understanding of how MySQL operates at a relatively low level and how to deal with ongoing frustrations (especially replication).

I was quite pleased. As others have noted, the book is readable and the authors' tone inviting. While the book does rigorously avoid discussion of low-level implementation details (e.g. "the query is parsed" is left as a black box step in the execution process), this does not detract materially from the message. The chapter on replication is one of the best treatments of this topic I have seen.

I only have a few criticisms. First, there are a number of typographical errors of varying severity, though I understand that the most egregious ones (e.g. in code) have been fixed in newer printings. Second, while the book is titled, "High Performance MySQL," it might be more aptly called, "High Volume MySQL." The contents seem highly directed toward sites that run simple queries against huge tables, neglecting somewhat the many sites (e.g. ecommerce) that may run very complex queries against small to medium size tables, but for which optimization may be just as important. This focus is unsurprising given the lead author's career at Yahoo!, but prospective readers should at least be aware of the bias.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Good intro to managing databases but short on details
Comment: This is an overall solid book, covering all aspects of running a MySQL database, from the impact of various flavors of hardware to architecting database clusters. However, I was expecting more details and insight about configuring and scaling MySQL. What are some of the finer points of implementing database clustering or federation? How does indexing and caching work in MySQL? How much will data fragmentation impact performance? In the end, even though the title suggests it covers advanced topics, I didn't learn much new from this book.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Self made DBA
Comment: A great overview of MySQL, with a cursory introduction to virtually every field a DBA will encounter over the years. The book is aimed at someone who has already used MySQL, but does not require in-depth knowledge - it's well written and should serve as a great starting point for further research. Jeremy covers: indexes, engines, query tricks, backup, security, and more. For a seasoned DBA, this book may not offer as much, but for the rest of us, it's a highly recommended read!

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