My So-Called Blog

Giuseppe Maxia’s new article at the MySQL DevZone rightly points out that using partitions doesn’t work by magic; as with any other enhancement, it requires a bit of know-how to realise its value. MySQL 5.1 Partitions in Practice reviews some of the basics and points out a few gotchas (if you want to partition on a DATE or DATETIME column, pay close attention here). He then provides some realistic examples showing how you actually get partition pruning working for your queries and backs it up with some interesting performance figures.

On a related note, I recently reorganised the MySQL Manual’s discussion of functions in partitioning expressions to get rid of the multiple listings (at Giuseppe’s behest). Now there’s a single Supported Functions list, which we hope you’ll find less confusing and more useful.

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I’ve written an article highlighting some recent developments with XML support in MySQL 5.1 and MySQL 6.0. Topics include:

• Outputting MySQL data in XML format; includes a look at the 3^rd-party lib_mysqludf_xql library
• Getting XML into MySQL; includes a discussion of the LOAD XML statement (new in MySQL 6.0)
• The ExtractValue() and UpdateXML() functions (new in MySQL 5.1)
• Security issues, including a look at a little nasty known as “XPath injection”

You can read it at the MySQL Developer Zone.

Alexander Barkov contributed a nifty stored procedure and a very helpful pre-publication review. Thanks, Bar!

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