Heikki, Thank you greatly for answering my questions. Your obvious dedication to the open source world and high-quality of software cannot be understated.
Upon reading some of the InnoDB source code, I've noticed that C seems to be your language of choice. That said, it seems more and more of the literature that is promoted around my university emphasises testing methods related to OO languages like Java and C++ or looking at different programming paradigms such as logical programming (my university formally trains all students in Prolog and optionally Mercury) and functional programming (Our very first CS subject involves Haskell programming! It used to involve Miranda). Is there anything in the way of strategies that you would recommend to developers (I'm working on a MySQL/InnoDB based server app at the moment. Anyone else who reads this message please hit me with your 2c) regarding C programming and testing (they drill C into us with great rigor at the university I attend, but after second year it boils down to assignment submissions and that's about it)? The reason that I ask is that you have managed to create the world's fastest transactional database handler that runs on such a large number of different architectures and operating systems. Also, the fact that you've taken everything that Oracle tout as making them brilliant and doing it many times better than they have displays your commitment and incredible set of skills. I hope that one day that the software I am currently building will also contribute to both the commercial software world and the open source community. The fact that you've achieved this with such success and that you post to the MySQL mailing list so often is why I ask you these questions. Regards, Chris On Sat, 2004-02-14 at 08:13, Heikki Tuuri wrote: > Chris, > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Chris Nolan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: "Heikki Tuuri" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2004 2:26 PM > Subject: Re: InnoDB Hot Backup + MySQL embedded? > > > > Dear Heikki, > > > > Thanks for the quick response! It never ceases to amaze me that such > > compartively small teams at Innobase Oy and MySQL AB produce such > > incredibly high-quality software. > > thank you for the praise :). > > > Being a final-year Software Engineering student, I'm curious as to what > > you consider the most difficult problem to solve in building InnoDB and > > ibbackup has been. > > Of technical matters, multiversioning (consistent read) has been the most > difficult to get working reliably. I wrote it probably around 1996, and > still last year a bug was found in it. Adaptive hash indexes and the insert > buffer have also been difficult to debug. The reason is obvious: in these 3 > things parallel execution of threads as well as background cleanup > operations complicate things. One-threaded, deterministic processing is much > easier to debug than multithreaded nondeterministic execution. > > > Given the fact that you set your goals extremely high > > for InnoDB (and have acheived them quite handily), I want to ensure > > that if anything remotely similar comes up in my final-year project that > > I either put my hand up for it and take on the challenge or run > > screaming in the other direction and have a somewhat easier year. > > In academic circles it is best not to put too much emphasis on programming > work :). Referees tend to favor papers written in plain English, and want > algorithms in pseudocode. They are not willing to dive into the full > complexity of a real-world implementation. There has been quite a lot of > debate and criticism around this gap between typical university research and > practical applications, but things will probably not change in the next 2500 > years. > > > Regards, > > > > Chris > > Best regards, > > Heikki > > > > Heikki Tuuri wrote: > > > > >Chris, > > > > > >----- Original Message ----- > > >From: "Chris Nolan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > >Newsgroups: mailing.database.myodbc > > >Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2004 2:45 AM > > >Subject: InnoDB Hot Backup + MySQL embedded? > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >>Hi all, > > >> > > >>I'm looking at developing an (open source) server-style application with > > >>the embedded MySQL library to be employed as the primary data store. > > >> > > >>Has anyone attempted to use InnoDB Hot Backup for such a beast? I ask as > > >>I do not know whether communication between ibbackup and the database > > >>engine is required (thus requiring a few changes to the embedded lib > > >>before compilation). A quick scan through the docs involved doesn't seem > > >>to point me in the right direction for a definitive answer on this. > > >> > > >> > > > > > >ibbackup can be used with the MySQL Embedded Server Library, no problem > in > > >that. ibbackup does not communicate with the mysqld server at all. It > just > > >reads the InnoDB data and log files. > > > > > >On the other hand, the innobackup Perl script does start a mysql > connection > > >to the server. > > > > > > > > > > > >>Regards, > > >> > > >>Chris > > >> > > >> > > > > > >Best regards, > > > > > >Heikki Tuuri > > >Innobase Oy > > >http://www.innodb.com > > >Foreign keys, transactions, and row level locking for MySQL > > >InnoDB Hot Backup - a hot backup tool for InnoDB which also backs up > MyISAM > > >tables > > > > > >Order MySQL technical support from https://order.mysql.com/ > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
