Maximize your strengths, minimize your weaknesses. You can apply this approach to many things in life, I apply it to describing and using MySQL the product, and it’s components. The Query Cache like many features in MySQL, and indeed features in many different RDBMS products (don’t get me started on Oracle *features*) have relative benefits. In one context it can be seen as ineffective, or even detrimental to your performance, however it’s course grain nature makes it both trivial to disable dynamically (SET GLOBAL query_cache_size=0;), and also easy to get basic statistics on current performance (SHOW GLOBAL STATUS LIKE ‘QCache%’;) to determine effectiveness and action appropriately.

MySQL DML Statistics using mysqlbinlog - 1 liner

An useful collection of places where you can find data available for benchmarks

I’ve been working on various different MySQL related issues and maintenance procedures some of which have not gone according to plan. Here is a recipe that may help you avoid wasting a lot of time, especially if your database is large.

The title says it all, and the explanation is very interesting. The consequences of disabling binlog due to lack of storage are catastrophic. Entertaining and worrying at the same time.

"Princess Ruruna, of the Kingdom of Kod, has a problem. Her parents, the King and Queen, have left to travel abroad. Ruruna has been left to manage the nations fruit business. Much is at stake, Kod is known as "The Country of Fruit." Ruruna is not happy though, as she is swamped by paperwork and information overload. A mysterious book, sent by her father, contains Tico the fairy. Tico, and the supernatural book are going to help Princess Ruruna solve her problems with the power of the database. This is the setting for all that takes place in The Manga Guide to Databases"