Getting Started with MyRocks

Download Facebook MySQL 5.6, then build from source

See Build Steps

Set up my.cnf

To enable RocksDB storage engine, you need to set at least the following parameters in my.cnf.

[mysqld]
rocksdb
default-storage-engine=rocksdb
skip-innodb
default-tmp-storage-engine=MyISAM
collation-server=latin1_bin #(or utf8_bin, binary)

log-bin
binlog-format=ROW

If you want to use both InnoDB and MyRocks within the same instance, set "allow-multiple-engines" and remove "skip-innodb" in my.cnf. Using mixed storage engines is not recommended in production, because it is not really transactional. But it is ok for experimental purposes.

Statement based binary logging is allowed on replication slave, but not on master. This is because MyRocks does not support next-key locking.

In addition you may want to set some of the following settings (note - this is not exhaustive):

datadir=<location_for_data_files>
socket=<socket_file>
port=<port>
sql_mode=<mode1>[,<mode2>]

Initialize database with mysql_install_db

mysql_install_db --defaults-file=/path/to/my.cnf

Start mysqld

mysqld_safe --defaults-file=/path/to/my.cnf

Create RocksDB table

Here is an example.

    CREATE TABLE `linktable` (
      `id1` bigint(20) unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
      `id1_type` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
      `id2` bigint(20) unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
      `id2_type` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
      `link_type` bigint(20) unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
      `visibility` tinyint(3) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
      `data` varchar(255) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
      `time` bigint(20) unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
      `version` int(11) unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
      PRIMARY KEY (link_type, `id1`,`id2`) COMMENT 'cf_link_pk',
      KEY `id1_type` (`id1`,`link_type`,`visibility`,`time`,`version`,`data`) COMMENT 'rev:cf_link_id1_type'
    ) ENGINE=RocksDB DEFAULT COLLATE=latin1_bin; 

The example shows some important features and limitations in MyRocks. For limitations, please read MyRocks Limitations for details.

• MyRocks data is stored in RocksDB, per index basis. RocksDB internally allocates "Column Family" to store indexes. By default, all data is stored into "default" column family. You can change column family by setting index comment. In this example, Primary Key is stored into "cf_link_pk" column family, and id1_type index data is stored into 'rev:cf_link_id1_type' column family.
• MyRocks has a feature called "Reverse Column Family". Reverse Column Family is useful if the index is mainly used for descending scan (ORDER BY .. DESC). You can configure Reverse Column Family by setting "rev:" before the column family name. In this example, id1_type belongs to Reverse Column Family.