memcached Functions for MySQL: Seemless Caching in MySQL

memcached is a popular, high-performance, distributed memory object caching system, generic in nature, but intended for use in speeding up dynamic web applications by alleviating database load. memcached is used by numerous well-known websites, as well as officially being supported by Sun/MySQL.

The memcached Functions for MySQL, written by Patrick Galbraith, are user defined functions (UDFs) that utilize the libmemcached C client libraries (Brian Aker) that give the developer all the functionality that they need to interact with memcached from within MySQL. This has a number of advantages:

• Provide some level of integration of MySQL and memcached.
• Logic that would otherwise have to be in the application can be pushed into the database.
• Both database and memcached interaction in one place.
• Both read-through and write-through caching can be accomplished using a number of means such as using triggers on inserts, updates, or deletes to automatically perform the similar action within memcached.
• Data is transferred to and from memcached is using a fast, C-based library vs. other language specific drivers.
• Complete functional implementation of all libmemcached calls are available with these UDFS
• memcached statistics are avaiable via the database

This presentation will show the developer how to

• Install the UDFs
• How to write queries, views, and stored procedures for read-through caching
• How to write triggers to use the UDFs for write-through caching
• How to move functionality from a web application (mod_perl) to using the UDFs.
• Question and answer session

The developer will leave this session with a good idea of how to install, use, deploy these UDFs for use in their applications.