My First Steps with MariaDB 10.2 and RocksDB Storage Engine

Last year I started to explore MyRocks, that is, RocksDB used as a storage engine with MySQL. So far I had to use Facebook's MySQL 5.6 to do this. I could try to use some specific development branches of MariaDB (or maybe even Percona Server) for this, but I preferred to wait until the engine is included into a main branch by the company I work for. Recently this happened, and now you can get RocksDB loaded and working in main MariaDB 10.2 branch. In this blog post I am going to explain how to build it from source and do some basic checks.

I was updating my MariaDB local repository on my Ubuntu 14.04 netbook, with 10.2 branch already checked out (do git checkout 10.2 if you see other marked with *, 10.1 is used by default):

openxs@ao756:~/git/server$ git branch  10.0
  10.1
* 10.2
  bb-10.2-marko

and noted the following at the end of output produced by git pull:

...
 create mode 100644 storage/rocksdb/unittest/test_properties_collector.cc
 create mode 100644 storage/rocksdb/ut0counter.h

So, I realized what I considered just talks, plans and rumors really happened - we have RocksDB in the main branch of MariaDB! I immediately proceeded with the following commands to get submodule for the engine up to date:

openxs@ao756:~/git/server$ git submodule init
Submodule 'storage/rocksdb/rocksdb' (https://github.com/facebook/rocksdb.git) registered for path 'storage/rocksdb/rocksdb'
openxs@ao756:~/git/server$ git submodule update
Submodule path 'libmariadb': checked out 'd1387356292fb840c7736aeb8f449310c3139087'
Cloning into 'storage/rocksdb/rocksdb'...
remote: Counting objects: 49559, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (70/70), done.
remote: Total 49559 (delta 31), reused 1 (delta 1), pack-reused 49485
Receiving objects: 100% (49559/49559), 97.77 MiB | 3.45 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (36642/36642), done.
Checking connectivity... done.
Submodule path 'storage/rocksdb/rocksdb': checked out 'ba4c77bd6b16ea493c555561ed2e59bdc4c15fc0'
openxs@ao756:~/git/server$ git log -1
commit 0d34dd7cfb700b91f11c59d189d70142ed652615
...

Then I applied my usual cmake command line and build commands:

openxs@ao756:~/dbs/maria10.2$ fc -l
2001     cmake . -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo -DWITH_SSL=system -DWITH_ZLIB=bundled -DMYSQL_MAINTAINER_MODE=0 -DENABLED_LOCAL_INFILE=1 -DWITH_JEMALLOC=system -DWITH_INNODB_DISALLOW_WRITES=ON -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/home/openxs/dbs/maria10.2
...
2003     time make -j 2
2004     make install && make clean
2005     cd
2006     cd dbs/maria10.2
2007     bin/mysqld_safe --no-defaults --port=3307 --socket=/tmp/mariadb.sock --rocksdb &

The last command above was my lame attempt to add RocksDB support in the same way it is done in MySQL 5.6 from Facebook. The option is not recognized and instead you just have to start as usual and install plugin:

install soname 'ha_rocksdb.so';

Then you'll see a lot of new rows in the output of SHOW PLUGINS:

...
| ROCKSDB                       | ACTIVE   | STORAGE ENGINE     | ha_rocksdb.so | GPL     |
| ROCKSDB_CFSTATS               | ACTIVE   | INFORMATION SCHEMA | ha_rocksdb.so | GPL     |
| ROCKSDB_DBSTATS               | ACTIVE   | INFORMATION SCHEMA | ha_rocksdb.so | GPL     |
| ROCKSDB_PERF_CONTEXT          | ACTIVE   | INFORMATION SCHEMA | ha_rocksdb.so | GPL     |
| ROCKSDB_PERF_CONTEXT_GLOBAL   | ACTIVE   | INFORMATION SCHEMA | ha_rocksdb.so | GPL     |
| ROCKSDB_CF_OPTIONS            | ACTIVE   | INFORMATION SCHEMA | ha_rocksdb.so | GPL     |
| ROCKSDB_COMPACTION_STATS      | ACTIVE   | INFORMATION SCHEMA | ha_rocksdb.so | GPL     |
| ROCKSDB_GLOBAL_INFO           | ACTIVE   | INFORMATION SCHEMA | ha_rocksdb.so | GPL     |
| ROCKSDB_DDL                   | ACTIVE   | INFORMATION SCHEMA | ha_rocksdb.so | GPL     |
| ROCKSDB_INDEX_FILE_MAP        | ACTIVE   | INFORMATION SCHEMA | ha_rocksdb.so | GPL     |
| ROCKSDB_LOCKS                 | ACTIVE   | INFORMATION SCHEMA | ha_rocksdb.so | GPL     |
| ROCKSDB_TRX                   | ACTIVE   | INFORMATION SCHEMA | ha_rocksdb.so | GPL     |
+-------------------------------+----------+--------------------+---------------+---------+
64 rows in set (0.00 sec)

MariaDB [test]> show engines;
+--------------------+---------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------+--------------+------+------------+
| Engine             | Support | Comment                                                                          | Transactions | XA   | Savepoints |
+--------------------+---------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------+--------------+------+------------+
| ROCKSDB            | YES     | RocksDB storage engine                                                           | YES          | YES  | YES        |
| CSV                | YES     | CSV storage engine                                                               | NO           | NO   | NO         |
| MyISAM             | YES     | MyISAM storage engine                                                            | NO           | NO   | NO         |
| MEMORY             | YES     | Hash based, stored in memory, useful for temporary tables                        | NO           | NO   | NO         |
| MRG_MyISAM         | YES     | Collection of identical MyISAM tables                                            | NO           | NO   | NO         |
| CONNECT            | YES     | Management of External Data (SQL/MED), including many file formats               | NO           | NO   | NO         |
| SEQUENCE           | YES     | Generated tables filled with sequential values                                   | YES          | NO   | YES        |
| Aria               | YES     | Crash-safe tables with MyISAM heritage                                           | NO           | NO   | NO         |
| InnoDB             | DEFAULT | Supports transactions, row-level locking, foreign keys and encryption for tables | YES          | YES  | YES        |
| PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA | YES     | Performance Schema                                                               | NO           | NO   | NO         |
+--------------------+---------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------+--------------+------+------------+
10 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Now I can create ROCKSDB tables and work with them:

MariaDB [test]> create table tmariarocks(id int primary key, c1 int) engine=rocksdb;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.14 sec)

MariaDB [test]> insert into tmariarocks values(1,1);
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.04 sec)

MariaDB [test]> select version(), t.* from tmariarocks t;
+----------------+----+------+
| version()      | id | c1   |
+----------------+----+------+
| 10.2.5-MariaDB |  1 |    1 |
+----------------+----+------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

MariaDB [test]> show create table tmariarocks\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
       Table: tmariarocks
Create Table: CREATE TABLE `tmariarocks` (
  `id` int(11) NOT NULL,
  `c1` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=ROCKSDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

MariaDB [test]> select engine, count(*) from information_schema.tables group by engine;
+--------------------+----------+
| engine             | count(*) |
+--------------------+----------+
| Aria               |       11 |
| CSV                |        2 |
| InnoDB             |        8 |
| MEMORY             |       74 |
| MyISAM             |       25 |
| PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA |       52 |
| ROCKSDB            |        1 |
+--------------------+----------+
7 rows in set (0.03 sec)

Moreover, I can still work with InnoDB tables and even mix them with ROCKSDB ones in the same transaction (at least to some extent):

MariaDB [test]> create table t1i(id int primary key) engine=InnoDB;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.24 sec)

MariaDB [test]> create table t1r(id int primary key) engine=ROCKSDB;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.13 sec)

MariaDB [test]> insert into t1i values (1), (2), (3);
Query OK, 3 rows affected (0.05 sec)
Records: 3  Duplicates: 0  Warnings: 0

MariaDB [test]> insert into t1r select * from t1i;
Query OK, 3 rows affected (0.04 sec)
Records: 3  Duplicates: 0  Warnings: 0

MariaDB [test]> start transaction;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

MariaDB [test]> insert into t1i values(5);
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

MariaDB [test]> insert into t1r values(6);
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

MariaDB [test]> commit;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.14 sec)

MariaDB [test]> select * from t1i;
+----+
| id |
+----+
|  1 |
|  2 |
|  3 |
|  5 |
+----+
4 rows in set (0.00 sec)

MariaDB [test]> select * from t1r;
+----+
| id |
+----+
|  1 |
|  2 |
|  3 |
|  6 |
+----+
4 rows in set (0.00 sec)

In the error log I see:

openxs@ao756:~/dbs/maria10.2$ tail data/ao756.err
2017-04-05 13:59:51 140157875193600 [Note]   cf=default
2017-04-05 13:59:51 140157875193600 [Note]     write_buffer_size=67108864
2017-04-05 13:59:51 140157875193600 [Note]     target_file_size_base=67108864
2017-04-05 13:59:52 140157875193600 [Note] RocksDB: creating a column family __system__
2017-04-05 13:59:52 140157875193600 [Note]     write_buffer_size=67108864
2017-04-05 13:59:52 140157875193600 [Note]     target_file_size_base=67108864
2017-04-05 13:59:52 140157875193600 [Note] RocksDB: Table_store: loaded DDL data for 0 tables
2017-04-05 13:59:52 140157875193600 [Note] RocksDB: global statistics using get_sched_indexer_t indexer
2017-04-05 13:59:52 140157875193600 [Note] RocksDB instance opened
2017-04-05 14:03:13 140157875193600 [ERROR] Invalid (old?) table or database name '.rocksdb'

So, not 100% clean integration, it's probably still at alpha stage, but now it is easy to build, migrate, mix, test, benchmark and compare InnoDB from MySQL 5.7 with latest RocksDB, all on the same MariaDB 10.2 code base!

I think a really great job was done by Sergei Petrunia, my colleagues from MariaDB, Facebook engineers and other interested MyRocks community members. I'd like to thank them all for their hard work on MyRocks and making it available in MariaDB. Maria Rocks!