On Wednesday 24 January 2001 09:08, Mauricio Breternitz wrote:
>Sasha:
> Replication means keeping multiple copies of the database, each
>copy being serviced by one server running in one processor. Also, each query
>in one database is repeated on the second one. From this understanding, I
>dont see any potential performance improvement. (I have not read the
>replication code in MySQL yet, though). But this way
>each query would have to be done twice.
No, only each update query is repeated. For an application with a large share
of reads, replication solves the load balancing problem quite nicely. It
allows you, for example, to have a dedicated machine for slow statistical
queries without tying up your machine that does live updates. You can also
just spread your non-critical reads ( where the data does not have to be
perfectly current - usually 1 - 2 sec delay) across many slaves, reducing the
load on the master. There are many other ways you can do it with replication,
depending on your needs.
>
> Our system allows for having a single copy of the database, visible to
>all processors.
>As you said in your note, the key is to get the locking right.
What kind of system do you have? You have not provided a good description of
it, but from what I have read, it could be one of the following:
* a big beefy multi-processor machine
In this case, you should just install MySQL and let it do the job. MySQL is
SMP-capable, so barring bugs in the thread library you link it against,
everyhting will happen automagically
* a bunch of hosts with a shared disk array
In this case, you can run mysqld on each machine, with external file locking
enabled - on by default, to turn off you do --skip-locking. Your success will
depend on how well good your I/O to that file system is and how
efficient/stable the locking mechanism provided by OS is. For example, it is
really bad with NFS. You may have better luck with GFS or some similar setups
when the hosts attach to the disk array directy or using some fast interface,
not through a network.
>
> Can you suggest which files I should look for placing the
>inter-processor locks ? (I am leery of making every call to pthread_mutex
>into a global lock, since this may hinder parallelism un-necessarily).
>I think we only need to lock around opening and closing files (tables) by
>each processor. What do you think ? (& Thanks for taking the time
>to help with this issue).
As I have said, the best thing to do at this point is to leave the code
alone, and first try to use what is there already to see if it works for you
to make sure you do not waste months knocking on the wrong door or
re-inventing the wheel. If it does not, explain what it is exactly you have
been trying to accomplish, and we will give you some suggestions on what you
can do to make it work. If the source of MySQL needs to be modified to make
your application work, and this is something sufficiently general to benefit
a lot of users, we will incorporate the changes into our code base. In fact,
in that case, we will probably do them ourselves.
--
MySQL Development Team
__ ___ ___ ____ __
/ |/ /_ __/ __/ __ \/ / Sasha Pachev <sasha@stripped>
/ /|_/ / // /\ \/ /_/ / /__ MySQL AB, http://www.mysql.com/
/_/ /_/\_, /___/\___\_\___/ Provo, Utah, USA
<___/
