From a functional perspective, the core SQL support in all major and minor RDBMS-es is reasonably similar. In this light, it's sometimes quite disturbing to find how some very basic things work so differently across different products. Consider this simple statement:

SELECT  'a' /* this is a comment */ 'b'
FROM    onerow

What should the result be? (You can assume that onerow is an existing table that contains one row)

It turns out popular RDBMS-es mostly disagree with one another.

In Oracle XE, we get this:

SELECT  'a' /* comment */ 'b'
                         *
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00923: FROM keyword not found where expected

PostgreSQL 8.4 also treats it as a syntax error, and thus seems compatible with Oracle's behavior:

ERROR:  syntax error at or near "'b'"
LINE 1: SELECT  'a' /* this is a comment */ 'b'

…

What’s missing from WebM? VoltDB launches. The importance of profitability. And more.

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“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

# Simon Phipps examined what’s missing from WebM, from an open source perspective.

# Mike Stonebraker’s VoltDB officially launched its open source in-memory OLTP database.

# Jim Whitehurst argued that one of Red Hat’s most valuable contributions to open source is its profitability.

# Infobright appointed former Aleri CEO Don DeLoach as its new …

...NoSQL is just larger than a fly's dropping, and MySQL and Oracle are more alike than either of their respective fanboys would like to admit.

Courtesy of Google trends:



I guess I won't be changing my career just yet.


UPDATE: I tried a few terms for "Microsoft SQL Server" before posting (SQL Server, MS SQL) but found none that came up with what I felt like was a realistic volume (they are all much, much lower than I expected). @MarkGStacey suggested trying "SQL 2008", "SQL 2005" and "SQL 2000", and those return much better results indeed (though still much lower than MySQL or Oracle). Anyway - I'd love to have some way of bunching up all those terms and have …

With the help of the MySQL community leaders, ODTUG has embraced the opportunity to add MySQL content to the already jam-packed agenda at ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2010, in Washington, DC from June 27 – July 1.

This track starts on Monday, and will have presentations running the entire length of the conference. The track is highlighted by its participation in the Sundown Sessions with the Oracle ACE Directors. In this session, Sheeri K. Cabral and Ronald Bradford, two of the current three Oracle MySQL Ace Directors will host a …

Multi-byte characters can cause quite a few problems for the unsuspecting DBA or web master. Most of the times all you need to do to figure out how to fix the problem is detect which database records have UTF-8 data in them. Scanning records manually is not an option. Try the following query to find strings with multi-byte [...]

The MySQL track at Kaleidoscope in Washington, DC during June 28-July 1st is set! Here is the schedule, Lincoln VI is the MySQL track room.

Ronald has done a super job and spent a ton of hours in the past several weeks coordinating this effort. Work has kept me much busier than normal, but I have lent some time to the coordination as well. It is a credit mostly to Ronald that we have been able to plan an entire 19-session conference track, complete with confirming speakers, in less than a month. (You may notice the schedule does not have all 19 sessions full, we are just waiting for some more speakers to confirm details.)

Whether …

Alfresco launches Activiti project. Funding for NorthScale and Zend. And more.

Follow 451 CAOS Links live @caostheory on Twitter and Identi.ca
“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

# Alfresco launched the Apache-licensed Activiti BPM project, led by Tom Baeyens and Joram Barrez.

# NorthScale announced $10m in series B funding, led by the Mayfield Fund, and a new CEO.

# Zend Technologies raised $9m led by Greylock Partners with participation its existing investors.

# Stephen Walli joined the CodePlex Foundation as its technical director. …

We have secured approval for our final two speakers and now have a full schedule for the 4 day MySQL track at ODTUG Kaleidoscope conference. The conference is in Washington DC from Monday June 28th to Thursday July 1st. Welcome to Josh Sled and Craig Sylvester that will be joining our existing list of speakers.

This conference will include 19 sessions of dedicated MySQL content from Monday thru Thursday by well qualified MySQL community members, as well a forums discussion and reception on Monday night. You don’t need to be an Oracle developer to get the benefit of this conference. We will offering a discount code for MySQL attendees in the upcoming days.

If you are in the DC area, the Monday night forum (known as the sundown sessions) as well as the reception are FREE for the MySQL community. This was a great jesture of the Oracle …

Welcome to Log Buffer, a weekly review of the database industry. This week’s issue Log Buffer #189 is generously published by Iggy Fernandez, editor of the quarterly journal of the Northern California Oracle User Group (NoCOUG).

As always, if you’d like to host your own issue of Log Buffer, simply reach out to the Log Buffer coordinator.

Please enjoy Iggy’s issue of …

We’ve long wondered what might happen to all of that open source software from Sun Microsystems now that it’s at Oracle? Obviously, some pieces continue to live at Oracle (Java, Solaris, MySQL), but there are a number of open source projects that Oracle has either neglected to talk about or have been overlooked, particularly as we focused on user reactions, implications and finally approval of Oracle’s acquisition of Sun.

One significant group of open source technologies from Sun is its OpenSSO single sign-on identity and access …