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Coming soon: High Performance MySQL, Second Edition

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We’ve begun writing the second edition of the now-classic High Performance MySQL. “We” means co-authors Arjen Lentz (formerly of MySQL), Baron Schwartz (that’s me), and Vadim Tkachenko and Peter Zaitzev, both formerly of MySQL’s high-performance team and now partners at Percona, a high-performance MySQL consultancy firm and host of the popular MySQL Performance Blog. Neither of the first edition’s authors (Jeremy Zawodny and Derek Balling) is working on this project, but they’re with us in spirit, I think. O’Reilly is still the publisher, and Andy Oram is still the editor.

Though we’re theoretically revising and updating the first edition, we’re actually starting from scratch and re-writing the book. We’re expanding it from the first edition’s 265 pages to 384, according to the contract, but my unofficial guess is it’ll go well over 400 pages. A lot has changed since Jeremy and Derek wrote the first edition — high performance MySQL is a bigger subject today, with different techniques, tools and technologies, and of course a much more complicated MySQL server. The second edition will remain the definitive reference for building high-performance, scalable systems with MySQL.

We’re early in the process, so it’s hard to know how far into the future we can safely look. Still, just to whet your appetite, here’s the table of contents:

  1. Preface
  2. Back to basics
  3. MySQL Architecture
  4. Finding Bottlenecks: Profiling and Benchmarks
  5. Schema Optimization and indexing
  6. Query Performance Optimization
  7. Advanced SQL Functionality
  8. Optimizing Server Settings
  9. Operating System and Hardware Optimization
  10. Scaling and High Availability
  11. Application Level Optimization
  12. Backup and Recovery
  13. Security
  14. Analyzing Server Status
  15. Tools for High Performance

Stay tuned for more news as the book progresses. The four of us plan to blog as we go.

Written by Baron Schwartz

August 30th, 2007 at 9:22 pm

Posted in Uncategorized

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11 Responses to 'Coming soon: High Performance MySQL, Second Edition'

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  1. Great news! It’s long overdue. The chapter on Application Level Optimization sounds interesting.

    Prashant

    31 Aug 07 at 12:12 am

  2. Baron,

    I want my copy signed!!! That is awesome news. I use the “first edition” of this book all the time, but it is quite dated.

    I can’t wait to see it. Was this the big secret project or is there something else??

    Keith Murphy

    31 Aug 07 at 12:23 am

  3. Its kind of a bible in our company and one of THE mysql book. Will buy 4 pieces of 2nd ed. the day when it arrives amazon ;)

    Sebs

    31 Aug 07 at 2:31 am

  4. Can’t wait to read it!

    Jean-Marc

    31 Aug 07 at 4:31 am

  5. Awesome news. Whats the target MySQL version? I presume you guys will cover 4.1 through 5.1?

    From the TOC I guess replication vs. ndb cluster vs. other cluster are lurking in chapter 10? Maybe a bit loaded as a single chapter?

    Lukas

    31 Aug 07 at 4:51 am

  6. Yep, this is the secret project. We’re covering 4.x through whatever we know a lot about, so we do mention 5.1 a lot. However I don’t think it’s all that helpful to look ahead too much. Sometimes when a book does that, the product goes a different way or features get cancelled, and even if they don’t, by the time future features are actually in use they tend to have better documentation and the book’s speculation doesn’t really help much, and it just looks out of date :)

    Cluster is huge subject, really a whole different piece of software. We have a section on it in the Scaling and HA chapter, but I think we’re basically going to try to help people decide what scenarios it’s good for. We couldn’t cover Cluster in-depth unless the book were dedicated to it. MySQL has a book on it, which is good as far as it goes, but it’s kinda small. There’s definitely a need for a High Performance MySQL Cluster book, but it won’t be this one.

    Xaprb

    31 Aug 07 at 9:19 am

  7. Well 5.1 is expected to go GA this fall, which would make it less of a moving target :)

    Lukas

    31 Aug 07 at 10:09 am

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