The PBXT pluggable storage engine and the MySQL 5.1.12 Beta release

OK, it took a while, but it has been worth the wait. At last I can now guarantee that when you download the PBXT source code, it will compile! But seriously, with the released of MySQL 5.1.12 Beta we now have an excellent platform for testing the pluggable storage engine API.

These are interesting times because we are seeing the future of storage engines in MySQL. The PBXT 0.9.73 release demonstrates the ease with which externally built storage engines can be combined with MySQL in the future. And, as I have mentioned before, PrimeBase XT is the first engine to take full advantage of this new feature in MySQL.

And while I am singing my praises let me remind you of 2 other reasons why you should try out PBXT: the engine achieves high concurrency using a pure MVCC implementation (MVCC stands for multi-generational concurrency control, if you want to know why, ask Jim! ;) and great performance with a write-once update strategy.

Download and further details can be found at http://www.primebase.com/xt as usual. The PBXT project is now hosted by SourceForge.net so for SVN access, bug reports and tracking, please go to: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pbxt.

To help you get started I have included 6 steps to build and test PBXT with MySQL 5.1.12 below.

Building and testing PBXT for MySQL 5.1.12

This description assumes the following:

• The user's name is myname.


• The home directory of myname is: /home/myname


• myname is using a working directory called: /home/myname/mysql-dev

1. Download the MySQL 5.1.12 source code tree, and unpack it in the /home/myname/mysql-dev directory.

2. Build MySQL as follows:

$ cd /home/myname/mysql-dev/mysql-5.1.12-beta
$ ./configure --prefix=/home/myname/mysql-dev/test --with-debug=full --with-mysqld-user=myname --with-extra-charsets=complex --with-plugins=max-no-ndb --with-embedded-server --enable-thread-safe-client --with-big-tables
$ make

3. Download the source code of PBXT 0.9.73 (or later), and unpack it in the /home/myname/mysql-dev directory.

4. Build and install PBXT as follows:

$ cd /home/myname/mysql-dev/pbxt-0.9.73-beta
$ ./configure --with-mysql=/home/myname/mysql-dev/mysql-5.1.12-beta --libdir=/home/myname/mysql-dev/mysql-5.1.12-beta/mysql-test/lib/mysql --with-debug=full
$ make install

5. Install the PBXT version of the mysql-test-run scripts:

$ cd mysql-test-update
$ ./update_mysql_test.sh /home/myname/mysql-dev/mysql-5.1.12-beta

6. Run the MySQL test scripts:

$ cd /home/myname/mysql-dev/mysql-5.1.12-beta/mysql-test
$ ./mysql-test-run --mysqld=--default-storage-engine=pbxt --force

NOTES:

• Almost all the tests should run through without error (I am still working on 2 or 3 tests that fail).


• Step 4 installs the PBXT shared library, libpbxt.so, in the mysql-test/lib/mysql directory where it is required by mysqld, which it is started by mysql-test-run.


• Step 5 modifies the file mysql-test/lib/init_db.sql, adding the statement: INSERT INTO plugin VALUES ('pbxt', 'libpbxt.so');, which will cause mysqld to load the plug-in when started.


• Both MYSQL and PBXT must be compiled with the same value for the --with-debug switch (on/off/full). If not, the plug-in will not load.

Normally you would install a plug-in using the command: INSTALL PLUGIN pbxt SONAME 'libpbxt.so';. However, unless you add this statement to every test script, this will not work when using mysql-test-run because the server environment is re-installed every time mysql-test-run starts.

By the way, the new perl based mysql-test-run is much faster on startup than the old UNIX shell based program. Makes testing much more fun ... thanks MySQL :)