Book Review - High Performance MySQL 3rd Edition

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This is THE MySQL performance book. Period!

Every chapter is very well crafted, with a precise balance between theory and practice, and full of invaluable nuggets, sometimes transcending the MySQL arena and applicable to any database! Such cases are Chapter 2-Benchmarking MySQL and Chapter 3-Profiling Server Performance, very solid foundations for the reading ahead.

All over the text, authors propose tools, examples of use and proven diagnostic techniques, that will greatly improve your performance firefighter skills and enhance your knowledge of MySQL internals. Nevertheless, what I liked the most from this book is taking into consideration the physical part of database structures in play when speaking about performance, which is something most authors don't include; plus treatment on MySQL high availability and cloud features, which we'll increasingly see on customers.

As you may know, MySQL architecture relies on what is called “Storage Engines” and this book provides resolution down to that level, describing behavior, pros and cons among each major storage engine, plus some improvements coming for MySQL 5.6 (now in beta stage). That is cool!!!

However, there is something that kind of bugged me at times and was references to a specific commercial MySQL offering and tools, but after taking a look to that company web-site, found that is a great contributor to the MySQL community and you can actually use the tools!

At the O'Reilly website you can take a look to the book's TOC, bet you will find it very complete; hey! you can even peek the content with Google Preview, just follow the link: High Performance MySQL

If you are interested on Mathematical Rigorous methods for performance tuning see Performance Enlightening - The Craig Effect (Tropa de Elite)

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Performance Enlightening - Craig Effect (Tropa de Elite)

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During the past week I had the opportunity to assist both the Oracle Performance Firefighting and the 

Advanced Oracle Performance Analysis and only can say: awesome!!!

Craig Shallahamer is a great teacher and has a lot of resources to effectively share knowledge, even if 

the subject is complex like buffer cache structures or arid like the mathematical foundation required for 

perf analysis. That is not all, he provides valuable tips of the trade or anecdote nuggets, dipped on a 

very fresh and sometimes humorist perspective.

The result: we started searching for those AWRs and Statspack reports that were difficult to analyze, I even 

recalled some unsolved performance cases that stained my record; difference now, is we all have the 

analytical elements to properly handle these and new challenges.

Here a group picture of "The Elite Squad" (Tropa de Élite)

Sao Paulo, Brazil / March 19th-23th 2012

 If you want to know more about these trainings or get more insight on Craig's methodologies and research, please click 

the image below (a new window will show up, you may need to allow this pop-up).

Go to OraPub.com

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Book Review - iOS 5 Programming Cookbook

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You will write iOS apps in less than you think

Being a C/BASIC hardcore programmer for mobile devices in a past life, I enjoyed very much this book because it really helped me grasp quickly many basic and intermediate topics on iOS 5 Objective-C programming, would say after reading the full book I have all needed to program good basic applications; and even after getting practice and experience, guess I will eventually resort on this book as reference. In my opinion this book is awesome and a must for beginners and intermediates.

Honestly, I consider myself not very much fan to the Cookbook format, however this is one case where the author, Vandad Nahavandipoor, exploits it wonderfully to show and develop case after case of what you will face as an iOS programmer, both for iPad and iPhone! He misses nothing and includes good explanations and concise screenshots when needed.

Now, the table of contents covers almost everything is needed to develop any type of application: Location & Maps, Networking, Audio & Video, plus some “must-have” topics like Multitasking, Graphics & Animations or Core Motion. My favorite chapter is #2, because it provides the building blocks for GUI programming, including corresponding source code examples!

Something I would like to see is bluetooth or network programming basics, but maybe I'm overreaching and those are advanced topics, out of the scope if this book.

If you want to take a closer look go to the Product Page at O'Reilly website: iOS Programming Cookbook - Book I'm sure you will get interested!


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