MySQL Community · This MySQL bug hid for three years before anyone reported it

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

I just read the MySQL source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

One counter-example: below MySQL 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

I just read the MySQL source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

I just read the MySQL source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

I just read the MySQL source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

One counter-example: below MySQL 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

I just read the MySQL source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

This is not a MySQL problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.