As mentioned in my earlier post Emulating Oracle Output Functionality, I’ll be speaking at the MySQL Users Conference on the topic of MySQL for Oracle Developers. Here is the second in a series of points regarding current MySQL Stored Procedures and Functions functionality.

• 3. Named Parameters
• 4. Procedure Overloading

3. Named Parameters

Parameters passed to Procedures under normal operations can be considered positional parameters. For each parameter, a calling statement is required to pass the same number of parameters and in the same order. Named parameters allows the user to pass parmeters in the order of their choosing, and also not pass all parameters. …

I stand corrected on my earlier post Emulating Oracle Output Functionality (which I’ve updated) when I made a reference to MySQL catching up. That was not what I was implying, that MySQL had to catchup to Oracle. I was indeed making reference that MySQL is a 10 year old product, Oracle almost 30, and with a far greater historical R&D budget, MySQL as an organisation has for lack of a better term, entered the race at a later time. One could also argue it’s not a race, I’m just using this analogy.

For those that might have thought this in reading my earlier article, I’d encourage you to re-read my updated introduction for my clarification and correction.

The comment was made to me, “Oracle is very good at being Oracle” which is totally correct, and the “MySQL’s market now overlaps that of Oracle, and so there is competition.” Indeed Oracle, as a …

Given a new Linux Installation, the following is my recommendation for installation of MySQL for a experienced software developer giving flexibility in a development environment.

1. Under normal circumstances, most distros include MySQL either in a default server installation or on the distribution CD’s. You should first ensure MySQL is not installed.

2. All products can be downloaded from the MySQL Downloads page.

3. Download MySQL 5.1 Beta - Linux (non RPM, Intel C/C++ compiled, glibc-2.3), this product is close to production release and stable. This also includes both Server and Client as well as provides flexibility in installation location and …

I’m a data modeller. I specialise in this, and for a number of years on large projects I’ve been able to focus on this single task within the System Development Life Cycle of software development for several months at a time. Unfortunately what depresses me the most, is I can’t get a full time position in what I’m an expert in. It’s not a specialised skill that an organisation can use on a full-time basis, unless it’s a large organisation, and quite frankly, Brisbane isn’t a market that can support the diversity of large organisations. (caveat, large organisations that are proactive in software development, not just large organisations that have significant IT requirements, but do not work proactively). This is why I can also do Software Development, Database Administration, and even System Administration. Again, I’m not good enough to fill one of these positions in a larger organisation as an expert, but I can generally hold …

As part of my using JMeter for the purpose of testing a new Transactional storage engine PBXT for MySQL, I’ve been investigating the best approach for handling transactions. Read more about earlier decisions at my earlier post Testing a new MySQL Transactional Storage Engine.

I found that the JMeter JDBC Sampler only supports SELECT and UPDATE Statements, and not calls to stored procedures. This is just one approach I’m considering taking.

Well, I guess it’s time to contribute code to an Apache Project. I’ve modified code and logged bugs before for Tomcat, but this will be my first attempt …

Updated 28-mar-2006
There really is no way to do a comparision by numbers in features and functionality when it comes to Oracle and MySQL in the area of Stored Procedures and Triggers. Oracle does provide a far greater and extensive features list, however having more only means it has more.

We all know this, MySQL is a growing evolving database product, having just celebrated it’s tenth anniversary, Oracle on the other hand, will next year be 30, and has had significant funding in R&D being up until recently the second largest software company world wide. However, being open source, MySQL has the advantages of being lean and mean, providing only …

Greg Stein, chair of the Apache Software Foundation, and an employee at Google, working on open source projects, gave a very informative and compelling talk this morning comparing the various open source (and commercial) licensing schemes and the development model of both the Apache Foundation and the Eclipse Foundation.

Some of the main points of Greg's talk were that:

• The Apache Foundation manages a community, not code.
• The trend towards commoditization in the software industry will push most software licenses towards non-copyleft licenses (more in a later post)
• A community will grow only when it is given the freedom to grow, and part of this freedom is the ability to commit code to the project

As for Apache managing a community, and not code, Greg is saying, quite rightly, that the value of the Apache Software Foundation is not in the combined quality of the project's code, but in …

Nick Halsey and I shared lunch at Novell's BrainShare conference yesterday, and fell to talking about the benefits inherent in an open source business model, real and imagined. One cherished benefit? Significant savings in sales and marketing costs. (Larry Augustin drove this point home at OSBC 2005, and John Roberts preaches this gospel frequently, in his OSBC 2006 keynote and elsewhere. I've said it, too.

Question: Is it true?

It's certainly true of open source companies at a certain stage in their existence. Alfresco, today, manages to sign marquee customers without stepping …

Andi Gutmans, co-founder of Zend Technologies, and others are now presenting the PHP IDE Eclipse plugin, which, announced last October, is one of the best potential tools on the horizon (the near horizon) for the 2.5 million PHP developers out in the development world. As many of you may know, Zend has the Zend Studio software, a PHP-centric IDE built on Swing. Zend made the decision to get involved in the Eclipse project because, according to Andi, of the enormous and thriving Eclipse community.

Sure, Eclipse developers are currently mainly Java developers. With the new PHP IDE plugin, PHP developers will have native debugging, syntax highlighting, and, eventually, support for MySQL and other database support directly within the Eclipse IDE.

Whereas the Eclipse project isn't "all about the IDE", as I've been told many times since coming to the conference here, the PHP IDE project is definitely IDE-centric. Currently, I'm not sure …

OK, just about to go into a long session comparing the Eclipse project with the Apache project; how it's management and code submission guidelines differ, and other things. I just have to say that EclipseCon is pretty darn cool. I have already met all the developers and key project leads from the Eclipse Data Tools Project, including John Graham and others from Sybase and IBM. Very sharp folks who are really excited about having MySQL's involvement in the project and committers from the MySQL development team working on key parts of the DTP framework.

Everything here at EclipseCon is about frameworks and extensibility. The various frameworks with the Eclipse platform serve as the foundation for all the building blocks (including the DTP and its various components) that compose the Eclipse universe. There is a focus within Eclipse on solid, extensible, open coding techniques, and the …