I have read the documentation thoroughly, however there are still some 
things unclear to me, and others that I want opinions on.

I am dismayed at what I see as a fundamental lack of "server 
administration" documentation. Much of the docs focus on the SQL aspects of 
MySQL. There is only a minor portion dealing with server administration. 
Most of which deals with installation, starting/stopping MySQL, and minor 
database administration. I would like to see more from a true System 
Administrators point of view.

I am still unclear as to how MySQL utilizes memory. I believe that for each 
client thread, there is a portion of memory only for that client, and then 
there is some memory that is shared between all clients. Is this correct? 
How can I tell how much memory is being used by a single client? What is 
the difference, if any, in MySQL parlance between a thread, and a 
connection? I want to be able to look at my server and see if the physical 
system is giving good performance, or if I need to provide more resources. 
I don't really know how to do this for MySQL though.

I have written some applications to use data from various MySQL databases 
on my server. However, I am trying to find the best way to write these 
applications. If a client has a (thread/connection) to the MySQL server, 
can that thread support multiple simultaneous queries? Obviously this 
question is loaded, but lets say I am using Sendmail tied to MySQL. Would 
it be better to write a sendmail that for each daemon running, has a 
persistent connection to the MySQL database, and uses that connection to 
query for each piece of mail it delivers. Or would it be better for my 
Sendmail to open a new connection for each piece of mail? I have seen the 
max_connections variable, and have adjusted this at least once. However, 
what does MySQL consider a connection?

Backups, backups, backups? What is the best way to do a backup? What about 
table maintennance? If I use myisamchk or another command line tool, do 
those lock the tables? If so, what kind of lock? If I run a CHECK table 
from using the interactive mysql, do I need to lock the tables first?

I know these are a lot of questions, if you have an answer to all or any 
part, email me directly please. Also, if you would like to include 
additional information please do so. I am not really a DBA, and am looking 
for more information from an SA point of view.

Thanks,
Shon


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