NEWS

Solid: Boosting MySQL for Mission-Critical Users

Open Enterprise
August 21, 2007
By Vance McCarthy

MySQL is poised to attract keen attention from F1000s running mission-critical apps. A meaner, faster version of MySQL, dubbed solidDB for MySQL, is now in GA. Co-built by MySQL AB and Solid Information Technology, it cuts response times, boosts scalability, and processed 2x more transactions than Oracle InnoDB, say benchmarks. A detailed results description can be found here.

[The GA release of solidDB for MySQL follows Solid’s becoming a MySQL Certified Storage Engine Program partner in April 2006.]

Under the covers, solidDB for MySQL consists of the MySQL Server, MyISAM storage engine, solidDB storage engine, and a high performance on-line backup utility. solidDB for MySQL is a product, and includes exactly the same code as the generally-available MySQL Server and can be accessed with MySQL drivers and tools that have been developed by MySQL AB and the MySQL community.

Inside MySQL’s ‘Solid’ Benchmark Numbers

Among the TM1 Benchmark’s results are: solidDB for MySQL completed 80 % of sample transactions in less than five milliseconds, while InnoDB completed 80 % of the same sample transactions in less than nine milliseconds. Further, solidDB for MySQL’s performance stayed constant with increasing database size while InnoDB’s performance significantly decreased as the database size increased beyond 100,000 rows solidDB for MySQL leverages Solid’s core technology, which over 14 years has provided high-availability and high-performance to commercial apps in the telecom and enterprise RDBMS sector. solidDB for MySQL, designed expressly, for transactional applications, supports full ACID compliance with configurable transaction isolation levels, both optimistic and pessimistic concurrency control, Multi-Version Concurrency Control (MVCC) with non-blocking reads and writes, row-level locking, and support for foreign keys and referential integrity.

MySQL AB CEO Marten Mickos commended the work: “MySQL is committed to delivering innovative, high-quality database solutions that meet a variety of end-user requirements. MySQL users can now take advantage of Solid’s high-performance, scalable storage engine for their mission-critical, high-throughput transactional applications. We congratulate Solid on the general availability of their product.”

“[T]he market is ready to adopt open source databases that support highly demanding mission-critical applications,” added Alain Couder, CEO and president, Solid Information Technology.

OET speaks with a Solid exec about 2007’s newest face for mission-critical MySQL.

Open Enterprise Trends interview with Paola Lubet, Vice President, Marketing and Business Development Solid Information Technology

OET: Let’s look at where are users looking for business-critical features for MySQL. Can you share Use Cases where enterprise managers are combining the solidDB Storage Engine with MySQL?

Lubet: Yes. A number of use cases work very well with solidDB for MySQL. Here are four specific cases:

(1) A need for high performance with multiple processor cores, such as would be the case with applications that have a high number of users. The benchmarks we published demonstrate that with multiprocessor cores, solidDB for MySQL performs significantly better than MySQL using InnoDB. This is increasingly important as multi-core processors become more prevalent, and also as server consolidation efforts concentrate application load onto a minimum number of multi-processor servers.
(2) A need for rapid response times, such as with the AJAX-based web applications which are gaining widespread acceptance. The benchmarks we published show that solidDB for MySQL returns requested data faster than InnoDB. This translates directly into improved usability and user satisfaction.
(3) A need to handle “hot spots” in the database, in other words changes that are concentrated in particular areas of the database. The multi-threaded code of the Bonsai Tree in solidDB’s Storage Engine addresses these situations very well, particularly in multi-processor environments.
(4) A need to reduce costs in mission critical applications. Of course many users are attracted to the low costs of the open source approach, but are concerned about reliability. solidDB for MySQL uses the same solidDB storage engine code is that has been shipping as part of Solid’s database products since 1994.

There are over 3,000,000 instances running worldwide in production, in applications such as class-5 switches, network management frameworks, trading room applications, retail point-of-sale systems, emergency location services, and storage systems. This proves that over 240,000 lines of solidDB storage engine code have met the requirements of mission-critical production deployments for more than a decade.

OET: How precisely are MySQL customers using the solidDB Storage Engine?

Lubet: solidDB for MySQL is a complete relational database management system that combines MySQL Server, solidDB Storage Engine and MyISAM storage engine. As such, it is a ready-to-install package that does not require any integration or configuration beyond the standard MySQL configuration file. Additionally, since solidDB for MySQL is built on MySQL and behaves like MySQL.

OET: At last year’s MySQL User Conference, Solid said it plans to offer MySQL users a family of business-critical features, such as concurrency control; ways to modify DB configs without stopping the app; and better security. What’s the status of these offerings?

Lubet: Concurrency control (optimistic and pessimistic) is included with the current version of solidDB for MySQL, which became generally available in December 2006. Also, with the current version some database configuration changes can be made without stopping the database.

We recently announced a 2007 roadmap for enhancements to solidDB for MySQL. That roadmap includes support for always-on availability, in-memory databases, and database replication. We are looking at enhancements in 2008 and beyond, but haven’t announced anything. [The Solid 2007 roadmap is available here.]

OET: SAP has been very public about its hopes to use MySQL to run highly-critical SAP enterprise applications. Will Solid play any role in this goal for business-critical MySQL?

Lubet: We believe that scalability and business continuity capabilities play a critical role in meeting the requirements of mission critical application deployments such as SAP’s. We are working hard to bring these capability to market.

More About solidDB for MySQL

The solidDB for MySQL product consists of the MySQL Server, MyISAM Storage Engine, solidDB Storage Engine, and a high performance on-line backup utility. solidDB for MySQL is licensed under open source GPL and according to the MySQL dual-license model. Users can acquire annual subscriptions to MySQL Enterprise for solidDB from Solid to receive support and regular software updates for solidDB for MySQL. solidDB for MySQL leverages the familiar MySQL interfaces, development environment, and management tools making the adoption of solidDB for MySQL easy and straightforward.