This is the 140th edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs. Welcome.

Let us begin with Oracle this week. Dan Norris illustrates how to start database services automatically after instance startup. He says, “Services are an essential component for managing workload in a RAC environment. If you’re not defining any non-default services in your RAC database, you’re making a mistake.”

Vivek Sharma published his tale of, Latch: Row Cache Objects causing huge performance issue. Clever detective …

Welcome to the 139th edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs. Let us begin with a look at the best from the Oracle ’sphere.

Oracle

Many of you might be considering some more training or certification. Coskan Gundogar has already been there, and has returned with the tale to tell, What I learned during Oracle SQL Expert Exam Study Part-1.

In Jared Still’s Ramblings a discussion of the evils of encoding meaning into data.

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Welcome to the 138th edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs. If you aren’t aware of who I am, my name is Nick and I am a Senior DBA at The Pythian Group. This is my second run at hosting Log Buffer, and I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did creating it.

As we see winter giving way to summer, I thought I would start with Informix.
Over at Informix-technology Fernando talks about FUD for thought where he talks about the future of Informix vs. DB2.

Sticking with IBM, I thought that we …

Welcome to the 135th edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs.

How about a little DB2 news to whet the palette? On IT, Life, DB2 pureXML, House Construction, Henrik Loeser Friedrichshafen has an item about Organic Food and pureXML. Completely unrelated! In the on-topic second part of this duo, Henrik relates the news: “I am happy to tell you that the so far separately priced pureXML feature will now be included in the core DB2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows.” And relevant links are included in this blog.

On the DB2PORTAL Blog, Craig Mullins admonishes, …

Welcome to the 134th edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs. There’s no time to lose, so let’s begin—with MySQL.

The big news this week, the epoch-shattering event, is of course, Monty Widenius’s departure from Sun, his time to move on. Perhaps not much of a surprise, given his famously underwhelmed response to 5.1’s GA release.

But Monty, your thunder has been stolen! MySQL boss Marten Mickos is leaving Sun too. So says Matthew Aslett on 451 CAOS …

Over the past few weeks (years really) there has been some discussion on sharding. Instead of discussing when sharding is required, as there are good discussions on this already, I want to discuss how I would like to have sharding implemented in the database.

I want the database to handle sharding automatically, and where it can't be automatic, I want the database to help as much as it can.  Just like I want my business logic in a language ideally suited to it, and not stored procs (generally, there are always exceptions); I want all my physical persistence to be handled by the place that already does most of it, the database.  Having the database handle some of the physical persistence and the object relational layer handle the sharding logic isn’t ideal to me, and not just because the current object relational layers don’t have all the sharding functionality I want.  So here is what I want my database to do.   …

Welcome to the 131st edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs.

Fundamentals are always a good place to start, so let’s do that courtesy Craig Mullins of Data Management Today. Craig’s fundamental question is, what does a DBA do? A good one for blank-faced relatives and dinner-party companions.

Perhaps you’re just a little blank-faced too, a least on the subject of DB2 LUW? If so, Susan Visser of Build your Skill on DB2 shows the way forward with a compilation of …

Happy Halloween! – well by the time you read this it will be more – Remember, remember the 5th of November!. So what’s been happening?

Well I spent the last month getting to grips with DB2 – why I hear you ask?.
You shouldn’t keep all your eggs in one basket, and there were rumors that DB2 might become Open Source at some point (or not). Anyway even if that never happens there is a lot to learn from the original DBMS and with DB2 Express-C available for free there’s nothing to stop your Open Source app taking advantage of that fact. Besides competition is a good thing.

Anyway not forgetting my …

This week gives me a chance to get back into something I love to do—write. For those who don’t know, my name is Keith Murphy and I am a MySQL DBA at the Pythian Group. In addition, I have the privilege of being the editor of the MySQL Magazine, a quarterly  magazine for those who use MySQL on a daily basis, either as a DBA or a developer. The sixth issue was just released last week and is available for download now. But enough about me! Let’s see what you all had to say this week.

Beginning with the world of MySQL.

Monty Taylor kicks things off, bringing us news of the …

You may know that I created a SQL Reserved Keywords Checker a few years ago. I was just noticing today that a lot of people are searching for the same keywords. Here's a list of the top 10 keywords people searched for using the tool in the past year:.