It took nearly eight months to get this new version of XAMPP released. A long time, but somehow this year it was harder than usual. Alone in the last four weeks, there were two new versions of Apache, two new versions of PHP and even two new versions of MySQL.

But let's get to the point: What's new in this version?

This time we updated Apache to 2.2.21, MySQL to 5.5.16, PHP to 5.3.8, and phpMyAdmin to 3.4.5, as well as the usual minor updates of libraries or system-specific components.

Also new: There's now a Solaris version for x86 processors and both Solaris versions now support the PHP Oracle extension out-of-the-box, i.e. there is no installation of additional libraries needed to access an Oracle database.

All downloads and further details about the new versions are available at the respective XAMPP project page.

PS: …

In California we are always thinking about backups.   Living near an earthquake fault line makes this necessary.  For me, it is the Hayward Fault (it runs from goal post to goal post  in University of Californa Berkeley stadium).  We are strongly advised to have backup systems for water, food, and medical emergencies.  It’s necessary to monitor your food and water emergency …

Ben Forta, the author of MySQL Crash Course and Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes, has written what I believe is the first MariaDB-specific book: MariaDB Crash Course. I just received word from Ben that the book is now shipping.

Most MySQL books can, of course, be used to learn almost everything you need to know about using MariaDB. But with all of the features and abilities MariaDB has gained in the MariaDB 5.2 and MariaDB 5.3 releases, it’s nice there is now a book specific to MariaDB.

You don’t need to know anything about MariaDB or MySQL in order to get the most …

This is the first in a three part series of blogs in which I’ll try to explain how to take an existing application and shard it.

Database Sharding has proven itself a very successful strategy for scaling relational databases. Almost every large web-site/SaaS solution uses sharding when writing to its relational database. The reason is pretty simple – relational database technology is showing its age and just can’t meet today’s requirements: a massive number of operations/second, a lot of open connections (since there are many application servers talking to the database), huge amounts of data, and a very high write ratio (anything over 10% is high when it comes to relational databases).

Many sites and blogs posts explain what sharding is, for example here and …

Oracle has now officially announced that MySQL is not a full free software project anymore and that they will go for an Open Core model.

This is inconsistent to the original MySQL business model. The main strength of MySQL has always been that all MySQL source code was freely available. It was thanks to this that MySQL got widely adopted and got to be used by tens of millions of users.

This was a fact that the MySQL board and Sun understood. Closing the MySQL server code base in any manner would be bad for long term business.

It's true that we in MySQL Ab did have some people, notable persons who came from the commercial world and did not understand or believe in free software, that spoke strongly for an open core model where some parts would be open and others closed. Initially …

Our latest MySQL white paper is Improving Percona Server performance with Flashcache on the Virident tachIOn Drive. (Virident funded the research, but as always, we wrote the report ourselves.)

The conclusion is that Flashcache can be good for read-heavy workloads, but more research is needed to understand its performance characteristics on write-heavy workloads. We explain the details of exactly how good and under what circumstances. We also developed some guidelines for sizing and pricing, to serve as advice for those interested in deploying Flashcache as a way of getting some of the benefit of flash without all of the cost, or the size limitations.

This week we have feedback about Gazzang - Gazzang is using encryptfs for their encryption. According to their launchpad project page at https://launchpad.net/ecryptfs, "eCryptfs is a POSIX-compliant enterprise-class stacked cryptographic filesystem for Linux".

The main topic is the 2nd part of events:

What events log and where the event logs are
How errors show up in the error log
How events and their actions get logged to the binary logs (aka events and replication), including how the "ignore" and "do" replication limitations work with events. Manual page: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/stored-programs-logging.html

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I was very much confused when I have tried to clear the screen of MySQL and I didn't got any result. root@nilnandan-Satellite-A200:~# mysql -uroot -p Enter password: Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input … Continue reading →

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I’ve never objected to someone making money from MySQL. I’ve only expressed disappointment that they weren’t doing it effectively enough. As I have predicted many times, Oracle is good at this. Oracle is the number one reason I didn’t start a new career in some other database a few years ago. Oracle is making MySQL more successful not only for Oracle, but also for the users, the community, and the competition.

I am glad that Oracle is offering more pay-only extensions to the server in a way that creates opportunities for others to do the same, and I look forward to even more of them in the future.

Further Reading:

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During OSCon, I went to dinner with a bunch of MySQL folks - Henrik, Mats, Lars, and Rich (audio engineer for the OurSQL podcast). On the recommendation of some friends in Portland, we went to Le Bistro Montage. There, we raised our shot glasses (full of an oyster shooter) and sang Helan Går (well, I did not sing because I have not familiarized myself with the song -- I am not a big drinker!)

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