BANGALORE, INDIA: Database administrators have this enormous responsibility to ensure that data in the various databases remains failsafe. They also have to focus on the performance and have to keep the databases tuned optimally for better performance. They also have to keep a disaster recovery plan in place, for which taking regular
database backups is one of the requirements.
This database backup can also be used while doing database migration to another servers or while upgrading to a newer version of the database server. Backup and Recovery are two important tasks for the DBA, to be performed on a regular basis. For MySQL database, a utility called "mysqldump" is available that is used to create the database backup, but the hindrance is that while the backup of the database is taking place the transactions to the database get blocked.
MySQL becoming more attractive in India
And as enterprise databases run into several hundred gigabytes, taking backups will consume a lot of time. Also, the time the enterprise database is being backed up, it will be kept locked from transaction calls. With the alpha release of new MySQL 6.0 Server, a new backup and restore feature has been introduced which answers the problems associated with mysqldump utility.
Online backup
Online Backup was introduced in MySQL 6.0. Apart from performing the usual backup tasks the new feature is that it does not block the concurrent connections to the database. Hence the word "Online", which means without blocking the database.
Therefore, unlike other database backup solutions like mysqldump, which caused other transactions on the database to hang while the backup was being performed, the
Online Backup allows Database Manipulation Language (DML) statements to execute concurrently while the backup is in progress. Though some locking of the database still happens. This locking is of Data Definition Language (DDL) statements like CREATE, ALTER or DROP queries, which means that only DML queries can execute concurrently while database backup is in progress.
Thus, the backup of the database can be carried without losing any transaction activity that might be happening during that moment. For DBAs this could be an interesting feature to opt for with the MySQL 6.0 Server when its final build is released.
