High Performance MySQL

What Hacker News says

1. cess11May 2025
   "Instead, it sends individual queries and joins the data on the application level. However, this doesn't mean that Prisma's relational queries are per se slower"

   Wow, what the fuck.

   "Also, this chapter about Query Performance Optimization from the High Performance MySQL book has some great insights. One of the techniques it mentions is JOIN decomposition:

       Many high-performance web sites use join decomposition. You can decompose a join by running multiple single-table queries instead of a multitable join, and then performing the join in the application."
   

   This belief that they can write JavaScript that outperforms decades of bare-metal executed optimisations in mainstream database engines is just astonishing.
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2. niwtsolMar 2025
   This is fantastic advice. At the first startup I worked at, we had several issues with our MySQL dbs & ETL jobs (MyISAM table locks, slow updates, no replication) - I spent a few days just reading the relevant sections of "High Performance MySQL: Optimization, Backups, Replication, and More" - and voila I had solid recommendations built on facts rather than random opinions people created over the years - put my career on an entirely different trajectory.
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3. ArchelaosMar 2024
   For a specific introduction to database optimization, I can recommend Silvia Botros and Jeremy Tinley: "High Performance MySQL" -- https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/high-performance-mysql/...
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4. dmitriidNov 2022
   > who used MyISAM

   I remember reading "High-Performance MySQL" in mid-200s. It was a real eye-opener: all the things you needed from a DB where somewhat randomly available across the different storage mechanisms, but not in any consistent form.

   Something like: Oh, you need query optimisation? Use one. You need constraints? Use the other. you need fast indexes? Use the first one again. And so on.

   > Ah, the "good" ol days.

   You'll pry my nostalgia from my cold dead hands!

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5. profwalkstrAug 2022
   I've joined a financial startup which is in the process of building a MVP and they want to use MySQL instead of PostgreSQL as the main DB (their critical DB, the DB which will store all financial transaction data). Think checking accounts, transactions, ledgers, credit cards, investment, etc. All of this will be stored in MySQL with InnoDB.

   My main concern is data loss and corruption.

   I know that HN and Reddit hates MySQL and praises PostgreSQL, but their arguments make sense to me:

   - Team more familiar with MySQL. It's better to use something that you know the defects and workarounds than to use something that's better in theory but you don't know how to tame it.

   - MySQL has more documentation and training resources. There are excellent, up to date O'Reilly books about it from the development, optimization and administration perspectives. Just from O’Reilly there is: Learning SQL [focused on MySQL], Learning MySQL [not to be confused with the former], High Performance MySQL, Efficient MySQL Performance, MySQL Cookbook. And all of them are up to date. The official docs are also very good. On the PostgreSQL side, no such resources, there seems to be no recent good books about it - the O'Reilly book is about a very old version and the Packt ones don't count, Packt books are usually sh..t. Also, the official docs seem meh (example: the MONEY type should not be used, but you wouldn't know this from the manual [https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/datatype-money.html], there's not even any mention on it being bad; you'd know it's bad only if you had read https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Don%27t_Do_This#Don.27t_use_money

   - Most complaints online seem to be about MySQL 5, which is very old and which problems mostly been fixed in modern versions, or about installations running without SQL strict mode on.

   - PostgreSQL is also not immune to problems: https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2017/02/10/postmortem-of-database-outage-of-january-31/

   However, I experienced, multiple times, data loss and corruption with MySQL and MariaDB, as recently as 2017. That makes me uneasy to fully trust it.

   What do you think, from a perspective of data integrity and reliability, about storing mission critical financial data in *modern* MySQL? Can it be trusted? Anecdotes about ancient versions will not be useful. Is anyone here running it for this kind of workload? Is PostgreSQL still considered safer than MySQL in 2022 or has MySQL caught up in that department? The main worry is not about features or speed, the main worry is data loss and corruption.

   Edit: formatting

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6. tristorSep 2021
   I don't have any one complete book that I can recommend, and I don't even really have a great reading list for this. But I'll make an attempt to share what I think is useful as a starting point.

   1. Systems Operations is first and foremost about understanding systems, in all of their complexity, which means understanding the internals of your OS primarily.

   2. Performance and networking, in particular, are super important areas to focus on understanding when it comes to learning the topic to help with software development.

   3. A lot of it is about understanding concepts in abstract and being able to extrapolate to other situations and apply these concepts, so there's actually quite a lot of useful information that can be learned on one OS and still applied to another OS (or on one game engine and applied to another, et al).

   Here's a few books I think are worth reading, not in any particular order of prevalence, but loosely categorized

   Databases:

   High Performance MySQL: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1449314287/

   SQL Queries for Mere Mortals: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321992474/

   The Art of SQL: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0596008945/

   Networking:

   TCP/IP Illustrated: https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0201633469/wrichards... (updates on author's site at http://www.kohala.com/start/tcpipiv1.html)

   The TCP/IP Guide: https://www.amazon.com/TCP-Guide-Comprehensive-Illustrated-P...

   UNIX Network Programming: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0131411551

   Beej's Guide to Network Programming: http://beej.us/guide/bgnet/

   Operating Systems:

   Operating Systems Concepts: https://www.amazon.com/Operating-System-Concepts-Abraham-Sil... (various editions, I have the 7th edition... I recommend you find the latest)

   Modern Operating Systems: https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Operating-Systems-Andrew-Tanen... (the "Tanenbaum Book")

   Operating Systems Design and Implementation: https://www.amazon.com/Operating-Systems-Design-Implementat-... (the other one, the "MINIX Book")

   Windows Internals:

   Part 1: https://www.amazon.com/Windows-Internals-Part-architecture-m...

   Part 2: https://www.amazon.com/Windows-Internals-Part-2-7th/dp/01354... (I had the pleasure of being taught from this book by Mark Russinovich and David Solomon at a previous employer, was an amazing class and these books are incredible resources even applied outside of Windows, we used 5th edition, I linked 7th, which has the 2nd part pending publication).

   MacOS Internals:

   Part 1: https://www.amazon.com/MacOS-iOS-Internals-User-Mode/dp/0991...

   Part 2: https://www.amazon.com/MacOS-iOS-Internals-II-Kernel/dp/0991...

   Part 3: https://www.amazon.com/MacOS-iOS-Internals-III-Insecurity/dp...

   Linux Kernel Programming:

   Part 1: https://www.amazon.com/Linux-Kernel-Development-Cookbook-pro...

   Part 2: https://www.amazon.com/Linux-Kernel-Programming-Part-Synchro...

   The Linux Programming Interface: https://www.amazon.com/Linux-Programming-Interface-System-Ha...

   General Systems Administration:

   Essential Systems Administration: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0596003439/

   UNIX and Linux Systems Administration Handbook: https://www.amazon.com/UNIX-Linux-System-Administration-Hand...

   The Linux Command Line and Shell Scripting Bible: https://www.amazon.com/Linux-Command-Shell-Scripting-Bible/d...

   UNIX Shell Programming: https://www.amazon.com/Unix-Shell-Programming-Stephen-Kochan...

   BASH Hackers Wiki: https://wiki.bash-hackers.org/

   TLDP Advanced BASH Scripting Guide: https://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/

   The Debian Administrator's Handbook: https://debian-handbook.info/browse/stable/

   TLDP Linux System Administrator's Guide: https://tldp.org/LDP/sag/html/index.html

   Performance & Benchmarking:

   Systems Performance: https://www.amazon.com/Systems-Performance-Brendan-Gregg-dp-... (this is Brendan Gregg's book where you learn about the magic of dtrace)

   BPF Performance Tools: https://www.amazon.com/Performance-Tools-Addison-Wesley-Prof... (the newer Brendan Gregg book about BPF, stellar)

   The Art of Computer Systems Performance Analysis: https://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jain/books/perfbook.htm (no longer available from Amazon, but is available direct from publisher. This is basically the one book you should read about creating and structuring benchmarks or performance tests)

   I guess that's a "reading list", but this is just a small part of what you need to know to excel in systems operations.

   I would say for the typical software developer writing web applications, the most important thing to know is how databases work and how networking works, since these are going to be the primary items affecting your application performance. But there's obviously topics not included in this list that are also worth understanding, such as browser/DOM internals, how caching and CDNs work, and web-specific optimizations that can be achievable with HTTP/2 or QUIC.

   For the average software developer writing desktop applications, I'd say make sure you /really/ understand OS internals... at the base everything you do on a computer system is based on what the OS provides to you. Even though you are abstracted (possibly many layers) away from this, being able to peel back the layers and understand what's /really/ happening is essential to writing high-quality application code that is performant and secure, as well as making you a champ at debugging issues.

   If you're trying to get into systems operations as a field, this is just a brush over the top surface and there's a lot deeper diving required.

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