MySQL's source code is open in the sense of being publicly available, but it's essentially closed to you if you don't understand it. In this book, Sasha Pachev—a former member of the MySQL Development Team—provides a comprehensive tour of MySQL 5 that shows you how to figure out the inner workings of this powerful database. You'll go right to heart of the database to learn how data structures and convenience functions operate, how to add new storage engines and configuration options, and much more.
The core of Understanding MySQL Internals begins with an Architecture Overview that provides a brief introduction of how the different components of MySQL work together. You then learn the steps for setting up a working compilable copy of the code that you can change and test at your pleasure.
Other sections of the book cover:
• Core server classes, structures, and API
• The communication protocol between the client and the server
• Configuration variables, including a tutorial on how to add your own
• Thread-based request handling and how threads are used in MySQL
• An overview of MySQL storage engines
• The storage engine interface for integrating third-party storage engines
• The table lock manager
• The parser and optimizer for improving MySQL's performance
• Integrating a transactional storage engine into MySQL
• The internals of replication
With descriptions of key data structures and methods not documented in the source code, Understanding MySQL Internals offers you the unprecedented opportunities to learn about the inner workings of this enterprise-proven database. Wheher you're a developer, DBA, programmer, software vendor, or student, this is your guide to discovering and improving a great database.
