Max DB Managing and Assorted Cool Features

talk by Roland Mallmann

MaxDB is older than I am, in 1977 started at University of Berlin. Owned by SAP today. Today it’s open source under GPL, or commercial license from SAP or MySQL AB.

Why Max DB is so great:
Low cost of ownership
Few config parameters
no size estimates for indvidual db objects

no reorg — space management done automatically — space no longer needed is returned immediately to the db, data occupied vs. free (holes) ration is highest as possible. This is done by matching logical pages to physical on disk with the Converter, and I/O and space management.

Space management done automatically
No reorganization is needed (ie, OPTIMIZE TABLE)
Gaps are not allowed, therefore updates and deletes are in place, and sorts happen AFTER an insertion.
Space freed is immediately returned to DB
Done by Converter, matches logical pages to physical disk.
Data is stored in B* Trees (b star tree) for almost all objects (Tables, indexes, secondary indexes, BLOBs)

Concurrent asynchronous I/O
Manages free blocks
Auto balancing of disk I/O
Savepoints
Backup Integration (including incremental)
Segmentation of the data cache
A 10 minutes cycle of changes flushed to disk
Flushing data pages to disk is spread out over the 10 minutes

Online Backup and Restore
Consistent backups, no need to apply logs
Savepoint issued before db backup, savepoint includes undo information for remaining open transactions.
Can do incremental, full data, or log backup
can restore, restore from a medium, or backup from history, or backup to a point in time.

Snapshots
Can make complete database backup
Can make a snapshot for replication
Can make incremental on master and restore snapshot on replication as a backup strategy (as long as there isn’t a newer snapshot, because then incremental backup logs are reset)

Standby Database
A standby is made possible using log shipping.
Master and slave share backup media (shared disk)
Init once with complete master backup
Redo available logs

In case of emergency: start slave, back up last log piece from master in case it hasn’t been shipped. Redo all ‘open’ log backups (should be none), redo final piece, start slave, it’s now the master!

Synchronization Manager
no permanent attention required
unattended desktop/laptop installation and operation

database snapshot functionality!

Formed a MySQL Quiz team
Met all the requirements for the MySQL Quiz
Took a Certification exam

everyone root for Team Prokrasti Nation!
Formed a MySQL Quiz team
Met all the requirements for the MySQL Quiz
Took a Certification exam

everyone root for Team Prokrasti Nation!
I was told that teams had to have a physical instantiation of a mascot, I didn’t knit something, but I did hand-craft an origami butterfly for Team Prokrasti Nation’s mascot:

(click picture for larger image).

Oh, and I won a fun game from O’Reilly for submitting speaker evaluations.
Formed a MySQL Quiz team
Met all the requirements for the MySQL Quiz
Took a Certification exam

everyone root for Team Prokrasti Nation!
I was told that teams had to have a physical instantiation of a mascot, I didn’t knit something, but I did hand-craft an origami butterfly for Team Prokrasti Nation’s mascot:

(click picture for larger image).

Oh, and I won a fun game from O’Reilly for submitting speaker evaluations.
talk by Roland Mallmann

MaxDB is older than I am, or commercial license from SAP or MySQL AB.

Why Max DB is so great:
Low cost of ownership
Few config parameters
no size estimates for indvidual db objects

no reorg — space management done automatically — space no longer needed is returned immediately to the db, data occupied vs. free (holes) ration is highest as possible. This is done by matching logical pages to physical on disk with the Converter, and I/O and space management.

Space management done automatically
No reorganization is needed (ie, OPTIMIZE TABLE)
Gaps are not allowed, therefore updates and deletes are in place, and sorts happen AFTER an insertion.
Space freed is immediately returned to DB
Done by Converter, matches logical pages to physical disk.
Data is stored in B* Trees (b star tree) for almost all objects (Tables, indexes, secondary indexes, BLOBs)

Concurrent asynchronous I/O
Manages free blocks
Auto balancing of disk I/O
Savepoints
Backup Integration (including incremental)
Segmentation of the data cache
A 10 minutes cycle of changes flushed to disk
Flushing data pages to disk is spread out over the 10 minutes

Online Backup and Restore
Consistent backups, no need to apply logs
Savepoint issued before db backup, savepoint includes undo information for remaining open transactions.
Can do incremental, full data, or log backup
can restore, restore from a medium, or backup from history, or backup to a point in time.

Snapshots
Can make complete database backup
Can make a snapshot for replication
Can make incremental on master and restore snapshot on replication as a backup strategy (as long as there isn’t a newer snapshot, because then incremental backup logs are reset)

Standby Database
A standby is made possible using log shipping.
Master and slave share backup media (shared disk)
Init once with complete master backup
Redo available logs

In case of emergency: start slave, back up last log piece from master in case it hasn’t been shipped. Redo all ‘open’ log backups (should be none), redo final piece, start slave, it’s now the master!

Synchronization Manager
no permanent attention required
unattended desktop/laptop installation and operation

database snapshot functionality!