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B-trees and database indexes
Engineering

B-trees and database indexes

B-trees are used by many modern DBMSs. Learn how they work, how databases use them, and how your choice of primary key can affect index performance.

Benjamin Dicken
Instant deploy requests
Product

Instant deploy requests

PlanetScale now supports instant DDL. Where eligible, you can run deploy requests that complete near-instantly.

Shlomi Noach
September 20, 2024

Cluster configuration

We’ve introduced a new panel that allows you to create and modify your keyspaces.

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September 20, 2024

Service tokens: all database permissions

You can now add service token permissions to all databases.

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September 17, 2024

Brownout notice: legacy connection strings

We will continue doing brownouts on the small number of databases using legacy connection strings.

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Anatomy of a Throttler, part 1
Engineering

Anatomy of a Throttler, part 1

Learn about some design considerations for implementing a database throttler.

Shlomi Noach
Increase IOPS and throughput with sharding
Engineering

Increase IOPS and throughput with sharding

For big databases, IOPS and throughput can become a bottleneck in database performance. Learn how sharding helps scale out IOPS and throughput beyond the limitations of a single server.

Benjamin Dicken
Tracking index usage with Insights
Product

Tracking index usage with Insights

Learn about the new PlanetScale Insights index tracking feature.

Rafer Hazen
Zero downtime migrations at petabyte scale
Vitess

Zero downtime migrations at petabyte scale

Data migrations are a critical part of the database lifecycle, and are sometimes necessary for version upgrades, sharding, or moving to a new platform. In many cases, migrations are painful and error-prone. In this article, we walk through how migrations are performed at PlanetScale, and offer advice on how to improve the migration experience.

Matt Lord
Faster backups with sharding
Engineering

Faster backups with sharding

Sharding a database comes with many benefits: Scalability, failure isolation, write throughput, and more. However, one of the lesser-known benefits comes from improved backups and restore performance.

Benjamin Dicken
Building data pipelines with Vitess
Vitess

Building data pipelines with Vitess

Learn the basics of Change Data Capture (CDC) and how to leverage Vitess VStream API to build data pipelines.

Matt Lord
The State of Online Schema Migrations in MySQL
Engineering

The State of Online Schema Migrations in MySQL

Learn about the options for running non-blocking schema changes natively to MySQL, using Vitess, or other tools

Shlomi Noach
Optimizing aggregation in the Vitess query planner
Vitess

Optimizing aggregation in the Vitess query planner

The Vitess query planner takes multiple passes over a query plan to optimize it as much as possible before execution. A recent tricky bug report led to an improvement in how the optimizer functions.

Andres Taylor
Dealing with large tables
Engineering

Dealing with large tables

Large databases often have a small number of very large tables that makes scaling difficult. How can you scale with these while keeping your database performant? This article covers three techniques.

Benjamin Dicken
Sharding strategies: directory-based, range-based, and hash-based
Engineering

Sharding strategies: directory-based, range-based, and hash-based

Learn about the different types of sharding: directory-based, range-based, and hash-based plus some of the pros and cons of each.

Holly Guevara
Announcing Vitess 20
Vitess

Announcing Vitess 20

Vitess 20 is now generally available.

Vitess Engineering Team
Self-managed Vitess vs Managed Vitess with PlanetScale
Product

Self-managed Vitess vs Managed Vitess with PlanetScale

PlanetScale and Vitess have a close relationship. Learn what it looks like to run Vitess on your own vs using PlanetScale. We cover cost, time to implement, management, and more.

Holly Guevara
Achieving data consistency with the consistent lookup Vindex
Vitess

Achieving data consistency with the consistent lookup Vindex

How we implemented a consistent lookup Vindex in Vitess to ensure data consistency without using 2PC

Harshit Gangal, Deepthi Sigireddi
The MySQL adaptive hash index
Engineering

The MySQL adaptive hash index

The adaptive hash index help to improve performance of the already-fast B-tree lookups

Benjamin Dicken
Introducing global replica credentials
Product

Introducing global replica credentials

With global replica credentials, you can now automatically route reads to the closest replica.

Matt Robenolt, Iheanyi Ekechukwu
Profiling memory usage in MySQL
Engineering

Profiling memory usage in MySQL

Learn how to visualize the memory usage of a MySQL connection

Benjamin Dicken
Summer 2023: Fuzzing Vitess at PlanetScale
Vitess

Summer 2023: Fuzzing Vitess at PlanetScale

My experience working as an intern in the Vitess query serving team for PlanetScale.

Arvind Murty
How PlanetScale makes schema changes
Engineering

How PlanetScale makes schema changes

Learn how PlanetScale uses GitHub Actions and PlanetScale to automate schema changes on our own application.

Mike Coutermarsh
Identifying and profiling problematic MySQL queries
Engineering

Identifying and profiling problematic MySQL queries

MySQL has built-in functionality for collecting statistics on and profiling your MySQL queries. Learn how to leverage these features to identify problems.

Benjamin Dicken
The Problem with Using a UUID Primary Key in MySQL
Engineering

The Problem with Using a UUID Primary Key in MySQL

Understand the different versions of UUIDs and why using them as a primary key in MySQL can hurt database performance.

Brian Morrison II
Announcing Vitess 19
Vitess

Announcing Vitess 19

Vitess 19 is now generally available.

Vitess Engineering Team
PlanetScale forever
Company

PlanetScale forever

PlanetScale is committed to providing a reliable and sustainable platform for our customers, not just in the short-term, but forever. For this reason, we are prioritizing profitability.

Sam Lambert
Introducing schema recommendations
Product

Introducing schema recommendations

Automatically receive recommendations to improve database performance, reduce memory and storage, and improve your schema based on production database traffic.

Taylor Barnett, Rafer Hazen
Foreign key constraints are now generally available
Company

Foreign key constraints are now generally available

You can now enable foreign key constraints to enforce referential integrity in your PlanetScale database.

Taylor Barnett, Rick Branson
Amazon Aurora Pricing: The many surprising costs of running an Aurora database
Engineering

Amazon Aurora Pricing: The many surprising costs of running an Aurora database

Amazon Aurora is pitched as a straightforward and scalable database service on AWS, but there are associated costs that you might not be aware of.

Brian Morrison II
Three common MySQL database design mistakes
Engineering

Three common MySQL database design mistakes

Learn about a few common mistakes when designing your MySQL database schema.

Brian Morrison II
OAuth applications are now available to everyone
Product

OAuth applications are now available to everyone

You can now build integrations that seamlessly authenticate with PlanetScale and allow management access to your users’ organizations and databases from your application.

Taylor Barnett