A strategy from the community

We have seen the news about MariaDB replacing MySQL in Fedora , SUSE and Red Hat.

While Oracle would not be happy about such news, the open source community supports the focus on a "more" open source solution to be implemented into Linux.

The interesting thing that we all might over look is that, the decision or strategy to move to MariaDB from MySQL was likely not just made by the upper management in Red Hat. This is much more likely to be a movement from the open source community that Red Hat evaluated and they listened.

Consider this, take a look back at Jackie Yeaney's (@jackieyeaney) post about the "Democratizing the Corporate Strategy Process at Red Hat" (posted Nov 10th, 2011) and learn how Red Hat works. "We utilized existing networks in the open source community to "keep our minds open" and socialize ideas outside of Red Hat."  The community wanted openness and a result was a move to MariaDB by Red Hat, is is related to the open strategy at Red Hat, in my humble opinion it is likely yes.

 Jim Whitehurst (@JWhitehurst) appears to embrace the open source community not just because of the financial gains it rewards the company but also because how it revolutionized how they work, make strategic decisions and take input from others: "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." 

Take a moment to relate that last statement to MySQL.  If you follow MySQL then you are well aware that Oracle closed (or have a less open version now) the bugs.mysql.com site. While Oracle has their own corporate reasoning for that, the open source community follows "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow."  

As MariaDB grows and become more imbedded into the Linux distros as the default DB the related bug tracking will be open and it will be interesting to see how the bugs split across Maria and MySQL in the long run.

So now.. the interesting aspect is while MySQL had enterprise and community versions owned by Oracle the move still happened because of MariaDB.  Oracle also owns Java and the related OpenJDK. While I am just asking this as an outsider looking in... If a Java/OpenJDK  was branched out into another software package that was not owned by Oracle, would we soon see an replacement for Java/OpenJDK in Red Hat as well ?  Again I am an outsider to the Java world, so I just ask that because of the similarities it represents with MySQL.

 

MariaDB & the Linux Distributions

So by now many of you have seen the news about Google, SUSE and  Red Hat / Fedora moving to MariaDB as the default database instead of MySQL.

MariaDB and SkySQL have made very productive business moves this year. What does this really mean for MySQL community and the general open source community ?

For starters think back to what made MySQL so popular? It was readily available in all the top Linux distributions.

OpenSuse and Fedora already are moving to MariaDB so the push for an open source focused movement has begun. Following a RHEL migration that has MariaDB as the default database would then also mean that CentOS would soon have MariaDB as the default database. 

Likely soon to follow will be a move by Ubuntu and Debian. I could have missed the news on a move already but I don't think so.

All of this is big news and moves for MariaDB and the open source community. MariaDB will naturally begin to see more user acceptance and use. While Oracle's MySQL is still an open source software package the big issue has been the bugs.mysql.com site and tracking of mysql user bugs. Will people soon start to track more bugs at MariaDB?

MariaDB also has open source features that mimic the enterprise only solutions available in Oracle's MySQL. So many users are going to naturally pick up on those features. 

While Oracle is building great features and code, but how many in the community are taking it? MySQL 5.1 is heavily used in the community used Linux distributions and many users might only know MySQL 5.1 and so soon MariaDB 5.5.   

What will happen next?
Well what Oracle decides to do is still yet to be seen. Oracle already takes Red Hat Linux to build their Oracle Linux (OEL). So ironically now MariaDB, which is forked from Oracle's MySQL, will be in Red Hat Linux for Oracle to remove for their OEL. Will Oracle fight back with Java in some way?

What will Percona do? Percona is also a player in this and has had a respectful relationship with MariaDB and Oracle over the years. Naturally, Percona does lean towards the open-source side of things so it will be curious to see if any move occurs on Percona's part.  Will more tools focused on MariaDB features becoming soon?

What will MariaDB do?  Well, monitoring the growth rate of bugs in the MariaDB Bugs database will help show how many people are starting to take on MariaDB.
Will Maria at some point break away from the MySQL source code updates and continue builds with just the community and their engineers? 

So what happens next?  We do not know. It is up to the open source community. A lot of angry voices had been directed at Oracle over the years. So how do those voices change or show support to MariaDB will soon to be seen. While many of them likely already support MariaDB, it is the adoption of the masses that will show how well MariaDB does in regards to MySQL. Many companies know the name MySQL and will be hesitant to move to MariaDB (This happened to me just the other day.) . So MariaDB's work is not yet done.

• http://www.zdnet.com/red-hat-will-switch-from-oracle-mysql-to-mariadb-reports-7000017907/
• https://www.openshift.com/blogs/why-mariadb-matters-the-openshift-interview-with-monty
• http://www.bytebot.net/blog/archives/2013/07/11/some-mariadb-related-news-from-the-red-hat-front
• http://www.zdnet.com/google-quietly-dumps-oracle-mysql-for-mariadb-7000020670/
• http://www.zdnet.com/opensuse-also-considers-switching-from-mysql-to-mariadb-7000010223/
• https://lists.launchpad.net/maria-discuss/msg00514.html
• https://mariadb.com/kb/en/reporting-bugs/

And yet after all of this... Oracle,  Red Hat and Google still come together to help the us government. 

MySQL in Google Cloud SQL

If you have not yet seen this.. pretty cool...

can "be accessed using MySQL Client, and other administration and reporting tools that work with MySQL databases."

http://gigaom.com/2013/10/30/google-woos-mysql-faithful-to-its-cloud/

"Google Cloud SQL is a MySQL database that lives in Google's cloud. It has all the capabilities and functionality of MySQL, with a few additional features and a few unsupported features as listed below. Google Cloud SQL is easy to use, doesn't require any software installation or maintenance and is ideal for small to medium-sized applications."

https://developers.google.com/cloud-sql/docs/introduction

Percona 5.6 (MariaDB & MySQL) & Debian/Ubuntu

Get up and running easily with Percona 5.6 on Debian.
This example is running Linux Mint 15.

 PERCONA 5.6:
 http://www.percona.com/doc/percona-server/5.5/installation/apt_repo.html

 linuxmint ~ # apt-get install percona-server-server-5.6 percona-server-client-5.6
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree     
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  libaio1 libdbd-mysql-perl libdbi-perl libmysqlclient18 libmysqlclient18.1 libnet-daemon-perl libplrpc-perl
  percona-server-common-5.6
Suggested packages:
  tinyca
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  libaio1 libdbd-mysql-perl libdbi-perl libmysqlclient18 libmysqlclient18.1 libnet-daemon-perl libplrpc-perl
  percona-server-client-5.6 percona-server-common-5.6 percona-server-server-5.6
0 upgraded, 10 newly installed, 0 to remove and 3 not upgraded.
Need to get 40.6 MB of archives.
After this operation, 140 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Y


linuxmint ~ # mysql -e "CREATE FUNCTION fnv1a_64 RETURNS INTEGER SONAME 'libfnv1a_udf.so'"
ERROR 1045 (28000): Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost' (using password: NO)
linuxmint ~ # mysql -e "CREATE FUNCTION fnv1a_64 RETURNS INTEGER SONAME 'libfnv1a_udf.so'" -p
Enter password:
linuxmint ~ # mysql -e "CREATE FUNCTION fnv_64 RETURNS INTEGER SONAME 'libfnv_udf.so'" -p
Enter password:
linuxmint ~ # mysql -e "CREATE FUNCTION murmur_hash RETURNS INTEGER SONAME 'libmurmur_udf.so'" -p
Enter password:
linuxmint ~ #
linuxmint ~ # mysql -p
Enter password:
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 52
Server version: 5.6.13-rc61.0 Percona Server (GPL), Release 61.0

Copyright (c) 2009-2013 Percona LLC and/or its affiliates
Copyright (c) 2000, 2013, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its
affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective
owners.

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.

mysql> SELECT VERSION();
+---------------+
| VERSION()     |
+---------------+
| 5.6.13-rc61.0 |
+---------------+
1 row in set (0.04 sec)



MariaDB 10 & 5.5 both resulted with the following
https://downloads.mariadb.org/mariadb/repositories/

linuxmint ~ # apt-get install mariadb-server
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree      
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.

So you need to review
https://mariadb.com/kb/en/installing-mariadb-deb-files/

linuxmint ~ # apt-cache show mysql-common | grep Version
Version: 5.5.33a+maria-1~raring
linuxmint ~ # apt-cache show libmysqlclient18 | grep Version
Version: 5.5.33a+maria-1~raring
linuxmint ~ # apt-get install mariadb-server-5.5 mariadb-client-5.5  libmysqlclient18=5.5.33a+maria-1~raring  mysql-common=5.5.33a+maria-1~raring
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree      
Reading state information... Done


MySQL:
http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/
It is possible to download the debian packages from the dev.mysql.com/downloads site.

Moving from MySQL 5.6 to Percona 5.6

Percona 5.6 was recently released (yesterday at the time of this post). So as simple example what all does it take to move to this "drop in replacement?"

Oct  7 06:47 Percona-Server-56-debuginfo-5.6.13-rel61.0.461.rhel6.x86_64.rpm
Oct  7 06:47 Percona-Server-client-56-5.6.13-rel61.0.461.rhel6.x86_64.rpm
Oct  7 06:47 Percona-Server-devel-56-5.6.13-rel61.0.461.rhel6.x86_64.rpm
Oct  7 06:47 Percona-Server-server-56-5.6.13-rel61.0.461.rhel6.x86_64.rpm
Oct  7 06:47 Percona-Server-shared-56-5.6.13-rel61.0.461.rhel6.x86_64.rpm

Oct  7 06:47 Percona-Server-test-56-5.6.13-rel61.0.461.rhel6.x86_64.rpm
# rpm -qa | grep MySQL
MySQL-server-5.6.13-1.el6.x86_64
MySQL-devel-5.6.13-1.el6.x86_64
MySQL-shared-compat-5.6.13-1.el6.x86_64
perl-DBD-MySQL-4.013-3.el6.x86_64
MySQL-python-1.2.3-0.3.c1.1.el6.x86_64
MySQL-client-5.6.13-1.el6.x86_64
MySQL-shared-5.6.13-1.el6.x86_64
MySQL-test-5.6.13-1.el6.x86_64

# rpm -Uhv *.rpm


While it would be nice to be able to Move from MySQL to Percona with such a simple command you will get conflicts if you tried it.

Percona-Server-server-56-5.6.13-rel61.0.461.rhel6.x86_64 conflicts with file from package MySQL-server-5.6.13-1.el6.x86_64


So instead you have to do the following.

You should already have backups but just in case create another one.

An extremely simple example below with Xtrabackup

innobackupex ./ 


• Turn off MySQL 
• Remove the packages 
• Install Percona 
• Start and connect.

# /etc/init.d/mysql stop
Shutting down MySQL..                                      [  OK  ]
# rpm -e MySQL-server MySQL-devel MySQL-client MySQL-shared MySQL-test mysql-workbench-community

# rpm -ihv Percona-Server-*.rpm
Preparing...                ####################################### [100%]
   1:Percona-Server-shared-5################################### [ 17%]
   2:Percona-Server-client-5#################################### [ 33%]
   3:Percona-Server-server-5################################### [ 50%]
Percona Server is distributed with several useful UDF (User Defined Function) from Maatkit.
Run the following commands to create these functions:
mysql -e "CREATE FUNCTION fnv1a_64 RETURNS INTEGER SONAME 'libfnv1a_udf.so'"
mysql -e "CREATE FUNCTION fnv_64 RETURNS INTEGER SONAME 'libfnv_udf.so'"
mysql -e "CREATE FUNCTION murmur_hash RETURNS INTEGER SONAME 'libmurmur_udf.so'"
See http://code.google.com/p/maatkit/source/browse/trunk/udf for more details
   4:Percona-Server-test-56 ###################################### [ 67%]
   5:Percona-Server-devel-56###################################### [ 83%]
   6:Percona-Server-56-debug##################################### [100%]
[root@centos64 Percona]# /etc/init.d/m
mdmonitor   memcached   messagebus  mysql       mysqld     
[root@centos64 Percona]# /etc/init.d/mysql start
Starting MySQL (Percona Server)...............             [  OK  ]
# mysql -e "CREATE FUNCTION fnv1a_64 RETURNS INTEGER SONAME 'libfnv1a_udf.so'"
# mysql -e "CREATE FUNCTION fnv_64 RETURNS INTEGER SONAME 'libfnv_udf.so'"
# mysql -e "CREATE FUNCTION murmur_hash RETURNS INTEGER SONAME 'libmurmur_udf.so'"

#mysql
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 4
Server version: 5.6.13-56-log Percona Server (GPL), Release rel61.0, Revision 461

Copyright (c) 2009-2013 Percona LLC and/or its affiliates
Copyright (c) 2000, 2013, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.


You are now free to explore Percona 5.6.