(Valerie Parham-Thompson) The pt-online-schema-change tool has been a workhorse for years, allowing MySQL DBAs to alter tables with minimal impact to application workload, and before MySQL had native online alter capabilities.

(Ståle Deraas) This blog post elaborates on the architecture and design of the transactional data dictionary that will be part of MySQL 8.0. Some descriptions of architecture will be implemented in later versions.

(Alexander Rubin) In this blog, we’ll discuss descending indexes in MySQL 8.0.

(Mikael Ronstrom) MySQL Cluster uses a distributed architecture where we have one primary replica and one or more backup replicas of all data in the cluster. In previous versions we have not supported reading from the backup replicas.

(Jon Tobin) Containers like Docker and Rocket are getting more popular every day. In my conversations with customers, they consistently ask what containers are and how they can use them in their environment. If you’re as curious as most people, read on. . .

In a previous blog, we looked at the efficiency gains when automating the deployment of a Galera cluster for MySQL. In this post, we are going to dive into cluster management. Should we manage our cluster manually, or does it make sense to automate the procedures ? What do we gain with automation?

(Alexander Rubin) This blog post discusses the ramifications of STRICT mode in MySQL 5.7.

(Aurimas Mikalauskas) When your car doesn’t start, you don’t just blindly change the battery, starter, fuel pump, spark plugs or all of the above. Instead, you go to your mechanic and ask him to check what is wrong (or you check it yourself if you are the mechanic) and then fix whatever is broken.

(Muhammad Irfan) In this blog, we’ll discuss things to watch out for during a MySQL downgrade.

In this post, we will talk about mysqlcheck which is a maintenance command line tool that allows you to check, analyze, repair, and optimize MySQL/MariaDB tables and databases.