Zend and IBM have recently released Zend DBi, a build of the MySQL database for the IBM i platform. With strengthened and expanded collaboration between Zend and IBM, Zend DBi is now available as a 100% compatible drop-in replacement; and Zend, the PHP Company will maintain and distribute it. Compiled to run on IBM i platform, it will evolve with the IBM i community's needs.

Further reports from Zend suggest that Zend DBi erases any uncertainty about the future of IBM i as a supported MySQL platform: it's built using the same open-source code used to build MySQL, and will be kept up to date by Zend and IBM with all features and bug fixes introduced in MySQL. As part of the enterprise-ready PHP technology stack for IBM i, Zend DBi allows users to leverage open and industry standard solutions, while keeping their web and mobile workloads on existing IBM i systems where …

This will be a multi-part series on using files as an alternative to simple database processes.  PHP has many little hidden features within its vast toolset. One of these features - often overlooked - is its uncanny capability to handle complex files. Sure, everyone knows that PHP can open a file, but what can it really do with that file? What actually brought the true range of possibilities to my attention was a request from a prospective client who had “no money,” but wanted a dynamic web survey developed. Of course, I initially offered the client the wonders of PHP and database interaction with MySQLi. Upon hearing the monthly fees from a local ISP, however, the client asked if there was any other way to have the work accomplished. It turns out that if you don’t want to use SQLite, another alternative is to use files to manage and manipulate small amounts of text for later retrieval. The functions we’ll discuss here are nothing out of …

Being the platform of choice for web developers worldwide to develop dynamic and custom–built web applications, PHP has taken centre stage in today’s web technology arena. Its popularity can be judged by the fact that almost two out of three websites developed nowadays use PHP in some form or the other.

When it comes to selecting a vendor for outsourcing your PHP development tasks, you will find that numerous vendors exist at every price point. Quite a few of them would try and compete on price. But care should be taken not to be carried away by the low price offered but instead find a vendor who can cater to your specific web development needs. Price alone cannot be the deciding factor in such business-critical PHP development projects, instead the reputation and track record of the vendor assumes significance. For the benefit of users who are concerned about the success of their PHP Project, we have enlisted a few pointers that will …

I enabled the InnoDB Lock Monitor in my MariaDB 5.5 instance (using XtraDB+ as the InnoDB – which is the default in MariaDB) and noticed that while the SHOW ENGINE INNODB STATUS was being logged to the error log, it wasn’t logging the “additional” lock information – it just looked like the plain ‘ole INNODB STATUS.

Long story short, Percona added a new variable so one has better control over what gets logged:

innodb_show_verbose_locks

If off (default), then the InnoDB Lock Monitor logs the normal INNODB STATUS, and if enabled, then it logs it with the extended lock information.

They also created another variable that goes along with this one (and the InnoDB Lock Monitor), which is:

innodb_show_locks_held

This variable indicates the number of locks to print that are held …

Hi everyone!

Here’s a video of this week’s #DBHangOps:

March 27th at 12:00pm PDT (19:00 GMT) is when the next #DBHangOps is gonna go down. Check out the twitter search and hop on the google hangout to contribute some discussion! This week’s topics are:

• MySQL and puppet
  • Sheeri Cabral shared a pastebin of a puppet manifest used at Mozilla: http://scabral.pastebin.mozilla.org/2251358
• MySQL “Gotchas” (round 2)
  • MySQL Bug on predicate deadlocks due to locking non-existent rows
• A shoutout for NWCNA 2013 from Sheeri. Submit …

In version 5.5 when you insert data into a column that is too long, MySQL truncates the data and creates a warning like so:

If you are not checking for warnings in your code you will be failing silently.

In version 5.6.6 onwards MySQL throws an actual error:

This is because by default 5.6.6 comes with sql_mode set to STRICT_TRANS_TABLES,NO_ENGINE_SUBSTITUTION.

If this is causing issues you can set sql_mode back to the pre 5.6.6 value by setting set global sql_mode = ''; while the server is running and sql_mode='' in your my.cnf file. Or you can fix your schema ;)

Two bits of good news for MariaDB users from the distribution standpoint this week:

• Slackware Linux is dropping MySQL for MariaDB as a default
• Arch Linux replaces MySQL in repositories with MariaDB

What is a conflict?

Readers of this blog know that one of my favorite tools, Tungsten Replicator, can easily create multi-master replication topologies, such as all-masters, star, fan-in. While this is good news for system designers and ambitious DBAs, it also brings some inconvenience. When you allow updates to happen in more than one master, you risk having conflicts. You may have heard this term before. For the sake of clarity, let's define what conflicts are, before analyzing each case in detail.

You have a conflict when several sources (masters) update concurrently the same data in asynchronous replication.

It's important to stress that this happens with asynchronous replication. In a truly synchronous cluster, where all data is kept consistent through 2-phase …

Open Database Camp was just over a week ago, Mar 16-17th at Harvard University, co-located with Northeast LinuxFest. We had a great lineup of speakers, and we have processed all 11 videos in record time! We got new video cameras at the beginning of the year, so the video quality and resolution is stellar, you can see everything. Here are the videos:

2013 Open Database Camp
and Related Northeast LinuxFest Videos

• Fractal Tree Indexes by Tim Callaghan of Tokutek

  …

“Working with empirical genomic data and modern computational models, the laboratory addresses questions relevant to how genetics and the environment influence the frequency and severity of diseases in human populations” –Thibault de Malliard. Big Data for Genomic Sequencing. On this subject, I have interviewed Thibault de Malliard, researcher at the University of Montreal’s Philip Awadalla [...]