the bastedo blog

(I did matching versions [5.x] don’t know how diff versions will work)

Setting up a slave with a newer version of MySQL is quite a common setup. It has a couple of advantages:
- it lests you test a new version before deploying on the master (to test that everything goes smoothly)
- it lets you test new major versions (e.g. 5.0) before they are released GA (helps find bugs that may affect your setup).

I know at least one customer generally has a slave runnin the latest BK tree - just to be sure that nothing is going to even potentially break for them. Kudos to them :)

Having a slave that you use for backups is a great idea. No extra load on the master (i.e. you can safely stop the db on the slave and back things up quickly - without having locks held on your master!).

Also, if …

I was tinkering a bit with integrating Wordpress and Gallery2 and in the process posted some photos from a trip to Prague I took earlier this year as part of a MySQL developer conference. If all works well, you can click the image below to see them:

A while ago I implemented native prepared statements into the MDB2 mysqli driver. However I was never able to get LOB support to work in the execute method. I almost forget about this and only stumbled over this issue again while testing a new portability fetch mode that fixes the issue of sqlite returning table qualifiers in associative fetches unlike most other DBMS extensions in PHP. Maybe someone has experience here and/or is motivated to fix the problem.

FYI: I also added the ability to specify if the array keys in associative fetches should be lowercased (default) or uppercased via the "field_case" option (set it to CASE_LOWER or CASE_UPPER). Previously only lowercasing was supported. Technically I should probably even make uppercased the default, …

I have been looking a bit at c# 3.0's LINQ feature. Essentially it provides with c# with an SQL syntax to do what SQL does on DBMS, XML, Array and many other forms of data. What is interesting that the syntax also allows you to define not only what data you want but also the structure you want it in. Furthermore using reflection on the data source and generally the fact that you are no longer passing just a string to your datasource (SQL or XQuery) it is now possible to do compile time checking.

At first it seemed quite wierd to me. But I am slowly warming up to the idea. Pondering things a bit further I discovered that in many ways PHP has tried to push things into a similar direction. For example PEAR::DB's getAssoc() method (as well as equivalent methods …

I just finished an upgrade to Shaw Extreme cable internet for my home network. The service requires that you change from a Terayon modem to a Motorola SurfBoard modem, and the payment of an extra $10 a month, but from what I can tell it will be oh so worth it.

Just before switching modems I started a download of the debug version of MySQL 5.0.12 (50 megs), I got around 300-400K per second. After the upgrade I tried the same download from the same mirror and saw 800-830K per second. SO far so good.

Of course, seeing that I host some sites from home, I was more interested in the upstream. Here BroadBandReports.com helps:

Certainly a step from the claimed 1.5 up / .5 down that my old service claimed. The new speed is supposed to be 7 down 1 up, and while the download speed is not hitting the claim, the upstream is right on target (according to BroadBandReports the …

MacOS X 10.2 doesn’t have poll(2).

Why they don’t, who knows. It’s not as if it’s new or anything. At least they do in future versions. I think I recall reading somewher that the OS X 10.1 implementation was buggy, so I think they pulled it out of 10.2 - for some people….

oh fun.

Just wanted to remind people in the Berlin area that there will be a special PHP UG Berlin meeting on september 12th as part of a roadshow. We will have a bunch of guests from Zend, eZ Publish and MySQL doing some very interesting presentations:

1. eZ systems: "Enterprise PHP components by eZ systems": Die eZ publish enterprise components sind der erste Schritt zur Erstellung von komplexen Webapplikationen. Dieser Vortrag stellt die Klassen-Bibliothek vor und zeigt exemplarisch deren Verwendung.
2. MySQL: "Einführung in MySQL 5.0": In diesem Vortrag erhalten Sie einen Überblick über die neuen Funktionen von MySQL 5.0. Erfahren Sie mehr über Stored Procedures, Views, Triggers, XA, Cursors und das Information Schema.
3. Zend: "Zend und die PHP-Community in Deutschland": Offene …

When:
Tuesday September 13th 7:00pm

Where:
Miro International Pty Ltd
Level 18, 31 Queen Street
Melbourne 3000, Australia

Thanks to Miro for offering their offices for the meeting.

What’s happening?
Stewart Smith will talk about:
- What’s new in MySQL land
- Introduction to MySQL AB the company
- what it does
- what it offers
- Graphical tools for MySQL
- MySQL Administrator
- MySQL Query Browser

RSVP
Please RSVP via our meetup.com site:
http://mysql.meetup.com/93/

After
We can head to a pub or out for curry.

Living in Berlin, the city of cities, has alot of advantages. One of the main advantages is that a lot of smart nice people realize the beauty of Berlin and therefore also live here. Some are even so smart as to live within a mile from my home. This applies to Stefan Hinz for example, who is the co-author of the anxiously awaited "MySQL 5.0 Certification Study Guide".

So instead of having to wait endlessly until Amazon finally stocks this book, I just had to put on my sandals and take a little stroll over to Stefan to have a nice chat and to pick up a copy of the book!

As I have mentioned I have decided to spend a year on self education. Getting MySQL certified is one of my top priorities for this year. Also I have had MySQL 5 installed on windows and linux for quite sometime now, but I never really got up and played with all the new features. This book looks to be the perfect excuse to finally do so!

I am also hoping …

I’ve just finished a tour through silicon valley (got to be up at 4:30 AM to catch a flight - yuck) for some meetings at the MySQL offices and had the opportunity to visit several customers (including our own internal webmaster!) to get some feedback on replication and backup features. I visited a good range of sites, from startups to very large established ISVs. The thing that impressed me most of all was just how smart the MySQL customers are.

When I’ve evangelised open source in the past I’ve often heard snide comments made by folks trying to understand open source, like “yeah, but does anyone actually look at the source?”. Yes, people actually look at the source. See, there are a whole lot of people in the IT/computer industry that actually care about being efficient (in terms of both human and computer resources), making things work right, and making sure that people don’t lose data. People look at the source code for MySQL …