What this book covers

Chapter 1, Understanding the Essentials of MariaDB, discusses some of the key concepts and components of MariaDB, such as storage engines and logging. The most important resources for MariaDB professionals are also listed in this chapter.

Chapter 2, Debugging, explains how to debug SQL statements in MariaDB. It discusses how MariaDB generates errors and logs that can be used to find bugs.

Chapter 3, Optimizing Queries, is an overview on query optimization. First, it shows how to find slow queries that need be optimized. Then, it discusses the most important algorithms used by the MariaDB optimizer to execute a query, such as the index merge and the subquery optimization algorithms.

Chapter 4, Transactions and Locks, deals with concurrency. It explains how MariaDB uses locks to guarantee a proper isolation level for each transaction, and how these locks affect performance.

Chapter 5, Users and Connections, discusses how to manage user accounts and their activities in MariaDB. It covers permissions, the allocation of resources on a user basis, authentication methods, SSL connections, and the pool of threads.

Chapter 6, Caches, explains the caches used by the general purpose storage engines: InnoDB buffer pool, MyISAM key cache, and Aria page cache. Then, it explains the query and subquery caches and discusses alternative methods to cache the results of queries.

Chapter 7, InnoDB Compressed Tables, discusses InnoDB compressed tables. It shows how to create compressed tables and how to monitor their performance. Finally, it compares the different compression solutions available in MariaDB.

Chapter 8, Backup and Disaster Recovery, explains the backup methods provided by MariaDB and some third-party tools. The chapter discusses how to choose a backup plan, how to perform the different backup types, and how to restore backups when needed.

Chapter 9, Replication, illustrates how to set up and maintain a replication environment. The latest features of replication from MariaDB 10.0 are included, namely parallel replication and multisource replication.

Chapter 10, Table Partitioning, shows how to split big tables into multiple partitions, perhaps located on different storage devices. The characteristics of different partitioning types are explained, as well as the optimizations allowed by the different partition types.

Chapter 11, Data Sharding, discusses the main methods to distribute data across multiple disks or servers. The storage engines that allow reading and writing data onto remote servers are illustrated here: SPIDER, FederatedX, and CONNECT.

Chapter 12, MariaDB Galera Cluster, covers the MariaDB distribution of the Galera Cluster technology. It explains how to set up a cluster, add new nodes, monitor performance, and identify the most common problems.