The release of MySQL 5.5 has brought several enhancements. While most of the coverage went, understandably, to the semi-synchronous replication, the enhancements of partitioning were neglected, and sometimes there was some degree of misunderstanding on their true meaning. With this article, we want to explain these cool enhancements, especially the parts that were not fully understood.

What's new, in a nutshell: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/mysql-nutshell.html Release notes: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/news-5-1-x.html (In the video, it's the page entitled "Changes in release 5.1.x"). And yes, very early on (at about 2 minutes in) I talk about my take on Monty's controversial post at http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2008/11/oops-we-did-it-again-mysql-51-released.html The slides can be downloaded as a PDF at http://technocation.org/files/doc/2008_12_New51.pdf or in Open Office presentation format at http://technocation.org/files/doc/2008_12_New51.odp

MySQL 5.1.38 includes the InnoDB plugin. This article shows how to install the plugin, using MySQL Sandbox and the binary snapshots.

This article explains how to test the performance of a large database with MySQL 5.1, showing the advantages of using partitions. The test database uses data published by the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Currently, the data consists of ~ 113 million records (7.5 GB data + 5.2 GB index).

The Partition Helper is a Perl script that converts some simple options into lots of partitions. Good for creating partitions on historical data.

Tutorial about MySQL partitions at the MySQL conference 2009. How to create them, what they are about, use cases, benchmarks tips, and tricks.

On the front cover of MySQL Administrator’s Bible is a sentence that reads: “The book you need to succeed!” I must say, I do agree.