Installing and configuring HandlerSocket

The HandlerSocket plugin is included with MariaDB, but like other optional plugins, it is not enabled or configured by default.

How to do it...

1. Launch the mysql command-line client and connect to our MariaDB database.

2. Install the HandlerSocket plugin using the following command:

   INSTALL SONAME 'handlersocket';
   

3. Open our my.cnf or my.ini file and add the following command to the [mysqld] section:

   # 
   # * HandlerSocket 
   # 
   handlersocket_address="127.0.0.1"
   handlersocket_port="9998"
   handlersocket_port_wr="9999"
   

4. Stop and restart MariaDB.

5. Reconnect to MariaDB using the mysql command-line client and see the HandlerSocket worker threads using the following statement:

   SHOW PROCESSLIST;
   

How it works...

The HandlerSocket plugin allows us to completely bypass the SQL layer of MariaDB. This offers an incredible speed for simple operations. The downside is that HandlerSocket only handles simple operations. It cannot handle anything beyond the basic SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE...