But there are still a few things to do before it can go stable. I reworked the client and admin roadmap the other day. I moved a couple items to a post 1.0.0 release. Specifically I moved the cache advances, session abstraction and expanded perm XML container. However if anyone steps up who has an immediate need for these features and does significant code contributions, these features could still of course be fast tracked to be included into 1.0.0 stable.

However even with this "reduction" in 1.0.0 scope, we still have a fair bit of work ahead of us. Obviously there are the usual bug fixes. I just fixed a few issues in the LiveUser_Admin_Storage layer were we dynamically generate the SQL to make our API so flexible. People really seem to be pushing the API more and more when I look at what …

For the geeky folks running a non-windows operating system on a windows system, what are you using, why, and do you like it?

I just found colinux, which looks good, and I’m installing mysql on it now. I’ve used cygwin and it’s just a pig, and things don’t work so well there.

VMware costs $$, and also isn’t really great either (I’ve had stability problems). What do folks think about these three?

Its done! After more than 2,5 years pondering on the design decisions in MDB we finally have a successor MDB2 with a first stable. Along with it the ibase, mysql, mysqli, mssql, pgsql, sqlite drivers have been marked stable.

In the past months a lot of people (Lorenzo, Helgi, David, Matthias and many others) have helped iron out the last issues, expand the test suite to uncover issues lurking within. Most PEAR packages support MDB2 and through the integration with these packages MDB2 matured as well. Of course there are still things to work on, but its good that we have made this milestone, because now users can rely on the MDB2 development team to maintain backwards compatibility.

Users interested in MDB2 should check out the wiki dedicated to …

Yesterday I ran into an old collegue that now runs quite a successful computer store chain and highly successful web store here in Australia. Long story short he was having some MySQL problems, so I offered to pass my eye over it. Now, given that they had some data corruption in stock levels not being correct (e.g. getting to an inventory count of -1), my first split second thought was inappropiate transaction management.

In thinking last night, what would I do as part of auditing an existing MySQL Installation and application quickly for reference and also to highlight issues etc, assuming I would have no access to any administrators or developers.

So what would you do? I made some preliminary notes, here’s the full account of what I did do.

Audit Steps

OS Specifics

$ mkdir /tmp/arabx
$ cd /tmp/arabx
# keep a quick copy of stuff
$ script
# Linux generals
$ hostname
$ uname -a
$ uptime
$ …

These are my first impressions of MySQL WorkBench 1.0.1. Rant and rave you may say, but a new user, or an experienced modeller would probably observe these points. Also, given that (with a poll?) I suspect a good number of users will be previous DBDesigner users, some level of functionality that may not be considered initially in a new product, should be considered for this migration path of legacy users.

I’ll take the time to review the Forums adding my points, and review Bug System but for now, just blogging is easier.

Conclusion

Note: Generally a conclusion is at the bottom, but I’d suspect most readers will switch off …

A long while ago I added a seemingly idiotic feature to MDB2: The ability to disable the execution of queries.

The idea was that with the combination of a debug handler it would be possible for people to create a dump of SQL queries generated by MDB2_Schema during the installation or updating of a schema. All you would need to do is write up a debug handler for MDB2. Finally you would set the "disable_query" parameter when calling MDB2_Schema::updateDatabase() to true.

<?php
function dump_to_file(&$db, $scope, $message, $is_manip)
{
    if ($is_manip) {
        $fp = fopen('dump.sql', 'a');
        fwrite($fp, $message."\n");
        fclose($fp);
    }
}

$dsn = 'mysql://root:@localhost/foo';

// customize MDB2_SCHEMA configuration options as needed
$options = array(
    'debug' => true,
    'portability' => (MDB2_PORTABILITY_ALL ^ MDB2_PORTABILITY_EMPTY_TO_NULL),
    'debug_handler' => 'dump_to_file',
);

$manager =& …

By now, I’m sure you have all heard about Free VMware Player allowing easy and quick access to see, view and use other OS’s easily. For those Windows users out there, now is your chance to trial MySQL under Linux with no impact to your system, why wait.

See the MySQL Virtual Machine details on the VMware site. On closer inspection this effectively pushes you to the VMware Technology Network (VMTN) page within the MySQL website.

The MySQL guys needs to update their site to reflect new reference to the free player, rather then a trial version of Workstation. Even VMware Server is free (could be mentioned). You can read more about the offerings etc at a …

I must admit I’d given up trying to get MySQL Workbench working under Linux. I guess I’d spent at least 4 or 5 days full time at it, and it was just out of my league, with GTK and C++ errors. It had seemed like a loosing battle, I’ve had 3 detailed documented goes at 1.0.0. Last Post 19th Jan, and 2 with 1.0.1 Last Post 31st Jan.

Anyway, the good news is I now have MySQL Worbench working under Linux. I’ve been working with MySQL AB on a number of specific problems and you should expect a release from MySQL AB soon to address these. Here is a summary of my experience.

• 1.0.1 removes the requirements for java dependancies
• 1.0.1 provides a README.linux with configuration requirements, and a subset list of minimum library …

Here’s a great thing for those who need to work with multiple platforms, VMware today announced that they are dropping VMware Server GSX and replacing it with the free (as in beer) VMware Server.

A press release on the change can be found at http://www.vmware.com/news/releases/server_beta.html

A product page for VMware Server is available at http://www.vmware.com/products/server/

VMware Server is the second offering from VMware, the first being VMware Player.

As with VMware Player, VMware Server is available for Windows and Linux host machines, with VMware Server able to run able to operate on one machine and be managed from another.

While the VMware Server is a bit of overkill for …

One of my favorite things about working at MySQL is that we are a distributed company. We have developers spread across dozens of countries, and most of them work from home offices. Before joining MySQL, I spent many years working for companies which forced the developers to work in centralized “development centers”, big office buildings located in various parts of the world. My one-year anniversary of working at MySQL is coming up in a couple of months, and I’m still amazed at how much better the communication is here than it was at those big companies with all the developers jammed into the same building.

At any time of day, I can log onto the internal MySQL IRC channels and discuss an idea or a problem with a MySQL core developer in some part of the world - in real time! We also make extensive use of VoIP technology, and so I end up communicating with my colleagues at MySQL much more regularly and efficiently than I ever imagined …