Resources for MySQL

This is my personal list of resources for MySQL. It’s neither exhaustive nor official—there are more resources for MySQL than listed on this page. But I know and trust these resources due to my professional experience in the MySQL industry.

You can trust the correctness and accuracy of whatever these resources say or write. However, everyone makes mistakes and MySQL is a vast and complicated subject that continues to evolve. Also, some resources are less relevant today than they were in the past, so adjust for time. For example, nobody runs MySQL 5.5 any longer, but you can still find mentions of that version.

MySQL Manual

The MySQL Reference Manual is the source of truth. Even MySQL experts rely on the manual and frequently read and reference it. RTFM is true tradition in the MySQL industry.

Books

My O’Reilly MySQL Playlist includes these books:

Learning MySQL (2nd Edition)

SQL Antipatterns (Vol. 1)

Efficient MySQL Performance

High Performance MySQL (4th Edition)

MySQL Troubleshooting

MySQL Cookbook (4th Edition)

MySQL Concurrency: Locking and Transactions for MySQL Developers and DBAs

Database Internals

From left to right, this reading list will teach you practically everything you need to know about MySQL and more.

Book Publishers

Not all book publishers cover on MySQL. Moreover, I’ve come across some MySQL books that do little more than rephrase the MySQL manual—a waste of your time and money.

These publishers print original and insightful works on MySQL:

Companies

Oracle
Oracle develops and publishes MySQL. It also offers training, certification, consulting, and support. As the upstream source of MySQL, Oracle is authoritative for all MySQL information.

MariaDB
Monty Widenius, the original author of MySQL, founded MariaDB to take MySQL development in a different direction. MariaDB Server started as fork of Oracle MySQL, and it’s still compatible, but it has become different enough to become it’s own distribution.

Percona
Percona is a legend in the MySQL industry and still the most important independent company in the MySQL industry. Percona Server is a true fork of Oracle MySQL: it follows the upstream source code but adds a long list of performance enhancements and features.

Planet Scale
Planet Scale is basically hosted Vitess, which means hosted shared MySQL at scale with a lot of point-and-click automation. Worth evulatinging if you need shared MySQL at scale but don’t want to operate Vitess yourself.

Pythian
Pythian is an independent company that has been active in the MySQL industry for a long time. The scope of their services is much wider than MySQL, but they are known as experts in the MySQL industry, too.

FromDual
FromDual provides independent consulting, support and, training for MariaDB and MySQL. It was founded by Oli Sennhauser, a long-time MySQL expert.

Conferences

I’m sure engineers talk about MySQL at many conferences, but these are the conferences where MySQL is a focus:

You should definitely attend these conferences as often as you can.

For more than 10 years, Percona Live (which took over the original O’Reilly MySQL Conference & Expo) was the event of the year in the MySQL industry. The COVID-19 pandemic caused all conferences to become virtual, but I sincerely hope that Percona Live can resume it’s former glory in 2022 and beyond.

Blogs

Following are team/company blogs, not the personal blogs of MySQL experts. Planet MySQL aggregates most MySQL blogs.

MySQL Experts

There are significantly more MySQL experts in the world than listed here, but these MySQL experts are public and widely known as book authors, active bloggers, conference presenters, or open-source software contributors. Any material by these people is trustworthy. Remember: not all experts are still active in the MySQL industry, so check the date of any MySQL resource that you use.

  • Aleksandr Kuzminsky
  • Alexander Rubin
  • Alexey Kopytov
  • Alkin Tezuysal
  • Baron Schwartz
  • Bill Karwin
  • Charity Majors
  • Collin Charles
  • Daniël van Eeden
  • Derek Downey
  • Domas Mitzus
  • Emily Slocombe
  • Erin O’Neill
  • Evan Elias
  • Fernando Ipar
  • Frédéric Descamps
  • Gavin Towey
  • Giuseppe Maxia
  • Henrik Ingo
  • Istvan Podor
  • Ivan Groenewold
  • Jay Pipes
  • Jean-François Gangé
  • Jenni Snyder
  • Jeremy Cole
  • Jeremy Tinley
  • Jesper Wisborg Krogh
  • Justin Swanhart
  • Kaj Arnö
  • Kenny Gryp
  • Laurynas Biveinis
  • Marc Lehmann
  • Marco Tusa
  • Marcos Albe
  • Mark Callaghan
  • Mark Leith
  • Matt Lord
  • Matt Ullmer
  • Matt Yonkavit
  • Michael Coburn
  • Mike Benshoof
  • Morgan Tocker
  • Nilnandan Joshi
  • Ovais Tariq
  • Øystein Grøvlen
  • Peter Boros
  • Peter Zaitsev
  • Pim van der Wal
  • Raghavendra Prabhu
  • René Cannaò
  • Richard Burnison
  • Rick James
  • Rob Wultsch
  • Roman Vynar
  • Ronald Bradford
  • Ryan Lowe
  • Sheeri Cabral
  • Shlmoi Noarch
  • Silvia Botros
  • Simon Mudd
  • Stewart Smith
  • Sugu Sougoumarane
  • Sveta Smirnova
  • Tim Vaillancourt
  • Tom Krouper
  • Troy Karraker
  • Vadim Tkanchenko
  • Valerii Kravchuk
  • Will Gunty
  • Yoshinori Matsunobu
  • Yves Trudeau