This book is for DB admins. I was hoping it would help me master query tools and or querying more. Instead, it's more about knowing the database tools and what they all do. It is an excellent book if that's what you're looking for. I think for me it was the step after the kind of mastery I was hoping for. From the description, I was thinking this has to just be a high-level outline, but nope, what's in the description is what's in the book; nothing more and nothing less.

A great book, practical and concise! Mastering is just the right word. Packt Publishing unveiled a good book.This book provides the knowledge needed to administrate the MariaDB server and clusters of servers.It helps to master database development on the MariaDB server,It helps administrators how to maintain a MariaDB server, diagnosing and solving problems encounter on production, such as MariaDB errors, logs, and locks.Performance can be a bottleneck and administrators or Dba will love how this books shows the way to improve the performance of a server by identifying slow queries.I really loved the way the author dealt with set up a proper backup plan and recover data when disaster occurs .The galleria arbitrator was not forgotten, this special type of node designed to help solve the split brain problem.A great book, I really love it and use it on my daily work.What I dislike:the font and indentation of command-line input or output, this font in bold makes reading painful ( really ! )i.e the show processlist output is awful( sorry )despite that, I would recommend this book !thanks a lot.

I'm not sure you'll 'master' MariaDB with this book but you'll certainly learn plenty. It's a bit of a cookbook style, which makes it very readable.

First of all, let me say this is not a beginner's book. Some knowledge (deep knowledge I would say for some chapters) is necessary to follow along with the concepts and examples stated in the book.The author, Federico Razzoli, being himself a contributor to the Open Source project MariaDB has a great and very deep knowledge of MariaDB. And that knowledge gets synthesized on this book.This book is heavily focused to administrate a MariaDB server/cluster. So if you are starting with MariaDB or learning SQL in general better look for another, more accessible, book. Personally I would recommend MariaDB cookbook from Daniel Bartholomew and available on packtpub too. The audience for this book is MariaDB administrators who want to understand, leverage and squeeze at its maximum the power MariaDB has to offer.Every chapter has tons of example code (you can download them from the packtpub site) and very useful insight on each and every aspect that is developed.The chapters I've found the most useful for me (I'm not a MariaDB administrator, but I have worked with it) are chapters 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6. They have helped me understand how MariaDB works for the things I usually use the most from it (optimize queries, look for errors, how the cache work, etc...). There are other aspects of the book such as table compression, replication and sharding that are thoroughly explained but I have never used. Anyway, if it comes the time for using them, I know now where to go to use them in an efficient manner.Following I summarize each chapter. What is it about and what can be found in it.Chapter 1 - Understanding the essentialsMariaDB architecture and history. Use of the MariaDB command-line shell. Good point on pagers when making queries on unix-like systems. Information about storage engines available. Information about XtraDB, TokuDB, MyISAM and Aria as different storage engines with the things that makes them unique. There is a section too showing other engines like OOGRAPH (for graph-like data), BLACKHOLE (not sure why it should be used as it does not store anything and always returns an empty set when queried), and other not so usual engines that can be used with MariaDB. Interesting section about logs (what logs do exist and where are they) and caches (with recommendation on size). Thorough explanation about the InnoDB data structure and the authorization and security process on MariaDB. The chapter ends explaining the information_schema database and with a discussion about the compatibility between different versions of MariaDB and MySQL.Chapter 2 - DebuggingThis chapter is about dealing with errors on MariaDB. Deep explanation on different ways to trace an error, from the MariaDB shell console to locating clue information on specific error-logs generated by MariaDB. I like the different sections where the file format for the different logs are explained. This is interesting for me as it eases the process of creating self-made tools to trace down errors. He shows also how to do maintenance for the logs (flushing, rotating, etc...). Different techniques for debugging stored procedures.Chapter 3 - Optimizing queriesHow to activate the slow query log on MariaDB and where this log is located. As in the previous chapter the format file for the log is explained along with tips to interpret the information that is stored within. Use of the slow_log table. Use of the pt-query-digest from the percona toolkit to help track down why a query is slow and how can it be optimized. There is a discussion too about storage engines and indexes. For the indexes only BTREE and HASH are discussed. Others like FULLTEXT and RTREE aren't. Use of EXPLAIN and how to interpret its results and tips on using indexes to optimize queries using joins and subqueries.Chapter 4 - Transactions and locksVery thorough and comprehensive treatment of locks and transactions and how do they work on MariaDB (specifically on InnoDB engine). Tips on tracking down locks and transactions. How to query MariaDB to get info about a lock or a transaction and how to deal with deadlocks when you get one. Special treatment on metadata locks, available on MariaDB since its 5.5 version. Metadata locks make sure the structure of a table will not change while reading or modifying some of its registers.Chapter 5 - Users and connectionsThis chapter goes all the way down from creating a user to give it permissions and the authentication process. It shows you too how to setup MariaDB for using a SSL connection. Adding to that it also shows you how to setup PAM modules to authenticate users and how to configure pools of threads on Unix-like systems and on Windows. A very deep explanation on handling connections (monitoring, killing, etc...).Chapter 6 - CachesA detailed trip over the different caches present on MariaDB. Caches for the different storage engines, how to set them and the different cache pages. Explains the query cache. When to use it and under which circumstances must be avoided (e.g. OQGRAPH storage engine), how to configure it and getting status information. Setting per-session buffers and why a good setting can avoid a DoS over a MariaDB server.Chapter 7 - InnoDB compressed tablesExplains the capacity of the InnoDB storage engine to compress its data. This can be used when the database data grows too much. It also can speed up your queries or not. Anyway this chapter deals with the pros and cons of such technique and when and how to use it and how to monitor it. This chapter ends up with a brief explanation of other compression solutions for the other storage engines.Chapter 8 - Backup and disaster recoveryPreventing data loss the author gives the necessary insight on how to do backups of your data. He explains the different type of backups and how do they differ depending on the storage engine. He also explains which physical files should be stored when doing a full backup, from info files to log files. I found particularly interesting how to create incremental backups using rsync. He talks also about a tool from Percona, XtraBackup, that does not need the server to be stopped and does not lock tables. A word on securing the backups is given. The chapter ends with a thorough discussion on repairing tables.Chapter 9 - ReplicationImproving fault tolerance. Improving query performance using a master-slave architecture. How the binary log is used to make replication possible and how to set it up. How to troubleshoot the most common problems.Chapter 10 - Table partitioningIn this chapter the author explains how to deal with very large tables splitting them up to be easier to read and write on them. Which storage engines can be used and how to maintain those partitions.Chapter 11 - Data shardingThe author discusses the three main methods MariaDB makes available to distribute data among servers: balancing I/O, the FEDERATEDX storage engine and the SPIDER storage engine, which I personally have found very interesting.Chapter 12 - MariaDB Galera clusterThis chapter explains how to create a cluster of MariaDB servers using Galera. It starts presenting key Galera concepts and why it fits perfectly for cloud computing. Following that there is a tutorial-like section explaining how to install and configure Galera and how to create a cluster along with its limitations (avoid query cache or using XA transactions). Monitoring tools and tips are given to control the clusters with examples of scripts. Finally the Galera Load Balancer is presented to distribute the workload among the nodes forming the cluster.Disclaimer: I was given an ebook copy from the publishers in order to review it.

Mastering Maria DB is a book for learning how to administrate the MariaDB server.It is intended for users that are quite familiar with MySQL. Newcomers to MariaBD even if they are familiar with other relational database servers administrative task will find it hard to follow.It is not a theoretical book it is a hands-on book so read it together with your instance of MariaBD server runnig close to you to take advantage of it.The main features an admisnistrator of MariaBD would know are covered in the book. However being a master administrator it could happen that sometimes some of the problems tackled you will feel you would like them to be covered more roughly and deeper