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

MySQL on Steroids
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!

It could have been better
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.

Excellent resource for the beginniner and seasoned administrator alike
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.

Good intro to managing databases but short on details
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.

Self made DBA
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!

Practical Book for MySQL 4.x users
This book is very practical and gives a clean insight for Power Users of MySQL. It also illustrates some concepts in brief and gets user going fast. Some of the topics like backups, load balancing are covered very well. In short following is what I can say in points.

-Very good quick reference and tips for mysql 4.x users
-Practical Tips and performance issues which you may not find in mysql official reference
-Writing style is definitely "get going" type and not a "comprehensive guide" style.

I liked this book and I use it as a reference. I would recommend this book to any MySQL 4.x users. Specially for those having the database in production environment, this book is really handy.

Good book overall, but may grow obsolete to MySQL5.
I mainly bought this book so that I could get some insight into ’advanced’ Storage and Replication techniques w/ MySQL.

Jeremy provided some pretty detailed and easy to understand examples, with decently comprehensive descriptions which did help answer some of the questions I had.

I’d suggest this book to anyone who wants to understand the principles of Storage and Replication techniques in MySQL4. This book is definately a kick in the right direction, but does not take you too far, so I’d say this is for intermediate users.

MySQL5 has many new storage and replication features not mentioned in this book, some of which resolve a lot of the ’problematic’ storage and replication issues that this book discusses, thus making SOME of the content irrelevent (or obsolete) to MySQL5. However, the overall principles remain the same, and can be applied to either version.

If you’re using MySQL4, then this book is for you!

If you’re using MySQL5, you may want to wait for a revised edition of this book.

I sure hope Jeremy is working on a revised version for MySQL5! *hint*hint* =)

A computer book actually worth reading
I read approximately 2 computer-related books a month, and have done so for the last 10 years. This book is the best computer book I have read in the last 5 years, hands down.

Not content on the basic "how to install, learn SQL, etc" route, Zawodny and company have chosen to give you real nuggets of wisdom to tune your MySQL instance with. This book is for the advanced MySQL developer/DBA/Admin, and medium to high knowledge of MySQL is a must to use this book effectively.

I would recommend this book to anyone with performance problems coming from MySQL. As always, check your code first :)

Easy Reading but lacking some things
This is a book for someone that knows MySQL and wants to give a leap forward, the book is an easy read, you start read and in an afternoon you finish it (it is not a boring book).

Despite all the explanation between the different engines, master/slaves, optimized queries, there is no answers about the topic of binary versus compiled install. The author has 2 or 3 pages about it but it doesnt say absolutely nothing

Excellent MySQL Guide
All the reviews were great on this book, after reading through it I now know why. I found information in the first hour of reading through this book that I had specifically looked for on the internet and never found. I always thought that Mysql queries should allow me to request a line from one table based on the value of a field in another table without needing to write code to handle the value in between to queries. Well, page 91 cleared that up really fast and now my execution time is down by 50% so far. Also saved a load of time in another script using the Count query which was looking for a way to do because I noticed phpMyAdmin knew how much data was in each table without any work.

One negative, this book doesn’t cover load balancing in depth enough. They recommended another O’reilly book for that. But it was enough for me.

Great Book! I recommend highly for perl/mod_perl programmers.

A must for MySQL Administrators
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.

Yes, you are going to need it!
Sooner or later the "small" application you have developed using MySQL will grow, and yes, MySQL will have to be a bullet proof solution.
This book has everything you need to know about what it takes to use MySQL seriously, either in corporate enviroments or web applications, just to use some examples.
Even if your application is not very complex or big, with this book you will notice that MySQL has got a full suite of solutions packed with it that can help you maintain your database 24 x 7 or recover from an inevitable disaster.
A MUST HAVE for the serious or wannabe MySQL administrator!

Lacking substance and will not benefit the pro DBA
Hi there

Coming from an Oracle and SQL Server world, not alot changes really between the enterprise class DBMSs, many of the same best practice principals apply. Unfortunatly, this book falls WELL short of the mark.

The book only glances over tuning, with no thorough look into the startup parameters for example. Indexing, stats collection etc is also very poor and there are no discussions on internals (to save us all from reading the code!).

The replication chapter was OK, but I would seriosly suggest that the modelled replication model for load balancing is a really bad idea and a maintenance/cost nightmare.

For a prod dba from Oracle or SQL, you will be very disappointed.

Focused, practical advice on MySQL
If you are thinking about rolling out a large MySQL installation this book is for you. Chapter five, on query performance tuning is worth the price of admission, and the rest of the book is good in addition. In particular the backup and replication chapters are also very good. The tone of the book is light, which makes it’s scant 250 pages a quick read. Graphics are used sparingly and to good effect.

For systems administrators and DBAs this is a must have book. For engineers it might be worth a look. It’s probably not worth the money if you are just using MySQL on an ISP and doing low volume work.