Questions

Questions and Answers

14.6.6.1: Is the system context switch expensive, how much overhead does the lua script add?

Lua is fast and the overhead should be small enough for most applications. The raw packet-overhead is around 400 microseconds.

14.6.6.2: How do I use a socket with MySQL Proxy? Proxy change logs mention that support for UNIX sockets has been added.

Just specify the path to the socket:

--proxy-backend-addresses=/path/to/socket

However it appears that --proxy-address=/path/to/socket does not work on the front end. It would be nice if someone added this feature.

14.6.6.3: Can I use MySQL Proxy with all versions of MySQL?

MySQL Proxy is designed to work with MySQL 5.0 or higher, and supports the MySQL network protocol for 5.0 and higher.

14.6.6.4: If MySQL Proxy has to live on same machine as MySQL, are there any tuning considerations to ensure both perform optimally?

MySQL Proxy can live on any box: application, db or its own box. MySQL Proxy uses comparatively little CPU or RAM, so additional requirements or overhead is negligible.

14.6.6.5: Do proxy applications run on a separate server? If not, what is the overhead incurred by Proxy on the DB server side?

You can run the proxy on the application server, on its own box or on the DB-server depending on the use-case

14.6.6.6: Can MySQL Proxy handle SSL connections?

No, being the man-in-the-middle, Proxy can't handle encrypted sessions because it cannot share the SSL information.

14.6.6.7: What is the limit for max-connections on the server?

Around 1024 connections the MySQL Server may run out of threads it can spawn. Leaving it at around 100 is advised.

14.6.6.8: As the script is re-read by proxy, does it cache this or is it looking at the file system with each request?

It looks for the script at client-connect and reads it if it has changed, otherwise it uses the cached version.

14.6.6.9: With load balancing, what happen to transactions ? Are all queries sent to the same server ?

Without any special customization the whole connection is sent to the same server. That keeps the whole connection state intact.

14.6.6.10: Can I run MySQL Proxy as a daemon?

Starting from version 0.6.0, the Proxy is launched as a daemon by default. If you want to avoid this, use the -D or --no-daemon option. To keep track of the process ID, the daemon can be started with the additional option --pid-file=file, to save the PID to a known file name. On version 0.5.x, the Proxy can't be started natively as a daemon

14.6.6.11: What about caching the authorization info so clients connecting are given back-end connections that were established with identical authorization information, thus saving a few more round trips?

There is an option that provides this functionality --proxy-pool-no-change-user.

14.6.6.12: Would the Java-only connection pooling solution work for multiple web servers? With this, I'd assume you can pool across many web servers at once?

Yes. But you can also start one proxy on each application server to get a similar behavior as you have it already.

14.6.6.13: In load balancing, how can I separate reads from writes?

There is no automatic separation of queries that perform reads or writes to the different backend servers. However, you can specify to mysql-proxy that one or more of the 'backend' MyuSQL servers are read-only.

$ mysql-proxy \
--proxy-backend-addresses=10.0.1.2:3306 \
--proxy-read-only-backend-addresses=10.0.1.3:3306 &

14.6.6.14: Could MySQL Proxy be used to capture passwords?

The MySQL network protocol does not allow passwords to be sent in clear-text, all you could capture is the encrypted version.

14.6.6.15: Can MySQL Proxy be used on slaves and intercept binlog messages?

We are working on that. See http://jan.kneschke.de/2008/5/30/mysql-proxy-rbr-to-sbr-decoding for an example.

14.6.6.16: MySQL Proxy can handle about 5000 connections, what is the limit on a MySQL server?

Se your max-connections settings. By default the setting is 150, the proxy can handle a lot more.

14.6.6.17: How does MySQL Proxy compare to DBSlayer ?

DBSlayer is a REST->MySQL tool, MySQL Proxy is transparent to your application. No change to the application is needed.

14.6.6.18: I currently use SQL Relay for efficient connection pooling with a number of apache processes connecting to a MySQL server. Can MySQL proxy currently accomplish this. My goal is to minimize connection latency while keeping temporary tables available.

Yes.

14.6.6.19: The global namespace variable example with quotas does not persist after a reboot, is that correct?

Yes. if you restart the proxy, you lose the results, unless you save them in a file.

14.6.6.20: I tried using MySQL Proxy without any Lua script to try a round-robin type load balancing. In this case, if the first database in the list is down, MySQL Proxy would not connect the client to the second database in the list.

This issue is fixed in version 0.7.0.

14.6.6.21: If you have multiple databases on the same box, can you use proxy to connect to databases on default port 3306?

Yes, MySQL Proxy can listen on any port. Providing none of the MySQL servers are listening on the same port.

14.6.6.22: Will Proxy be deprecated for use with connection pooling once MySQL 6.x comes out? Or will 6.x integrate proxy more deeply?

The logic about the pooling is controlled by the lua scripts, you can enable and disable it if you like. There are no plans to embed the current MySQL Proxy functionality into the MySQL Server.

14.6.6.23: We've looked at using MySQL Proxy but we're concerned about the alpha status - when do you think the proxy would be considered production ready?

We are on the road to the next feature release: 0.7.0. It will improve the performance quite a bit. After that we may be able to enter the beta phase.

14.6.6.24: Will the proxy road map involve moving popular features from lua to C? For example Read/Write splitting

We will keep the high-level parts in the Lua layer to be able to adjust to special situations without a rebuild. Read/Write splitting sometimes needs external knowledge that may only be available by the DBA.

14.6.6.25: Are these reserved function names (for example, error_result) that get automatically called?

Only functions and values starting with proxy.* are provided by the proxy. All others are provided by you.

14.6.6.26: Can you explain the status of your work with memcached and MySQL Proxy?

There are some ideas to integrate proxy and memcache a bit, but no code yet.

14.6.6.27: Is the MySQL Proxy an API ?

No, MySQL Proxy is an application that forwards packets from a client to a server using the MySQL network protocol. The MySQL proxy provides a API allowing you to change its behavior.

14.6.6.28: Is there any big web site using MySQL Proxy ? For what purpose and what transaction rate have they achieved.

Yes, gaiaonline. They have tested MySQL Proxy and seen it handle 2400 queries per second through the proxy.

14.6.6.29: So the authentication when connection pooling has to be done at every connection? What's the authentication latency?

You can skip the round-trip and use the connection as it was added to the pool. As long as the application cleans up the temporary tables it used. The overhead is (as always) around 400 microseconds.

14.6.6.30: Is it possible to use the MySQL proxy w/ updating a Lucene index (or Solr) by making TCP calls to that server to update?

Yes, but it isn't advised for now.

14.6.6.31: Isn't MySQL Proxy similar to what is provided by Java connection pools?

Yes and no. Java connection pools are specific to Java applications, MySQL Proxy works with any client API that talks the MySQL network protocol. Also, connection pools do not provide any functionality for intelligently examining the network packets and modifying the contents.

14.6.6.32: Are there tools for isolating problems? How can someone figure out if a problem is in the client, in the db or in the proxy?

You can set a debug script in the proxy, which is an exceptionally good tool for this purpose. You can see very clearly which component is causing the problem, if you set the right breakpoints.

14.6.6.33: Can you dynamically reconfigure the pool of MySQL servers that MySQL Proxy will load balance to?

Not yet, it is on the list. We are working on a administration interface for that purpose.

14.6.6.34: Given that there is a connect_server function, can a Lua script link up with multiple servers?

The proxy provides some tutorials in the source-package, one is examples/tutorial-keepalive.lua.

14.6.6.35: Adding a proxy must add latency to the connection, how big is that latency?

In the range of 400microseconds

14.6.6.36: In the quick poll, I see "Load Balancer: read-write splitting" as an option, so would it be correct to say that there are no scripts written for Proxy yet to do this?

There is a proof of concept script for that included. But its far from perfect and may not work for you yet.

14.6.6.37: Is it "safe" to use LuaSocket with proxy scripts?

You can, but it is not advised as it may block.

14.6.6.38: How different is MySQL Proxy from DBCP (Database connection pooling) for Apache in terms of connection pooling?

Connection Pooling is just one use-case of the MySQL Proxy. You can use it for a lot more and it works in cases where you can't use DBCP (like if you don't have Java).

14.6.6.39: Do you have make one large script and call at proxy startup, can I change scripts without stopping and restarting (interrupting) the proxy?

You can just change the script and the proxy will reload it when a client connects.