Upgrading MySQL can be a bit of a leap of faith. You hope for everything to go well but really don't want to rely on mere hope to ensure that you don't find yourself with a nasty surprise late one night.

Out of the box, MySQL isn't exactly tuned for resilience on a busy network where things occasionally go haywire.

Working with CouchDB is very straightforward. There's virtually no setup involved and no complicated libraries to hassle with.

CouchDB is one of the most popular and mature document-oriented databases. Let's have a look at the features that make it so popular, get it installed, and start putting it to use.

When dealing with large distributed systems, knowing some basic performance and failure numbers helps you understand what you can reasonably expect both in terms of performance and reliability.

Non-SQL oriented distributed databases are all the rage in some circles. They're designed to scale from day 1 and offer reliability in the face of failures.

Consistent Hashing is a useful technique for horizontal scaling while also protecting yourself against future growth as well as server failures.

How can you help to ensure availability of a of a web site or other network service? We'll look at some of the techniques at our disposal.

Relational databases are not necessarily the best choice for modern Web applications. A new generation of alternatives is emerging. MongoDB is one of the best emergent solutions. And it's open source.

Sometimes you need answers to important questions quickly. When benchmarking new disk and disk-like subsystems, how can you get relevant and useful info without a lot of time?

This week we continue on the trek to locate the source of failing MySQL connections and uncover a solution.

Troubleshooting is often an adventure that takes you to unexpected places and teaches you a lot along the way.

Need a key/value store that doesn't compromise functionality for performance? Have a look at redis.

As technology evolves, it's often worth re-thinking how we do things. A small group of engineers is doing just that for MySQL.

What are the first things you should look at after learning of a sudden change in MySQL server performance?

The PBXT storage engine for MySQL is nearing a stable release. What's so special about PBXT, anyway?

Believe it or not, there are servers specifically designed to run MySQL -- not to mention other hardware that help to accelerate your databases. Here's a look at what's out there.

Install isolated side-by-side MySQL instances right the first time with this time-saving virtual manager.

Here's a look at some of the most useful MySQL tools you've probably never seen (or heard of).

What are a few of the things you really need to keep in mind when starting that next big MySQL project?

Harness the power of distributed computing using everyday Unix command-line tools and a clever little bash script.

Now it's time to get serious and look at writing some simple code that can query a running Sphinx index and take advantage of its advanced query features.

A continuing look at putting the Sphinx search engine to use.

Drizzle is a re-thought and re-worked version of the MySQL kernel designed specifically for high-performance, high-concurrency environments. In this exclusive article, MySQL guru Jeremy Zawodny takes an inside look at the goals and state of Drizzle development.

Looking for ways to overcome indexing bottlenecks at Craigslist lead to an investigation of Sphinx, a powerful, free full-text search engine that works extremely well with MySQL.

Percona's XtraDB is a fork of InnoDB with a ton of extra options and enhancements. Here's a look at what it can do for your busy database.

Robust development from outside the Sun/MySQL sphere, new storage engines and the return of Monty are just some of the signs that MySQL is healthy, despite may reports to the contrary.

Looking for a mature, open source database that's not owned by Oracle? Whether you're already a fan or are looking for alternatives, now might be a good time to take a look PostgreSQL. The latest release of Postgres has a slew of built-in features that allow you to improve both performance and systems administration. Learn how you take advantage of them.

Despite some of the concerns floating around the MySQL Conference this week, there's some good news coming out of the event. The MySQL developers are returned to a "release early, release often" schedule and the pending 5.4 release has a number of features worth keeping an eye on.