OpenSQLCamp is less than 4 months away, and I have finally gotten around to updating the site. Special thanks go to Bradley Kuzsmaul and the folks at Tokutek for getting the ball rolling and making the reservation at MIT. Using MIT means that we will have *free* reliable wireless guest access and projects.

OpenSQL Camp is a free unconference for people interested in open source databases (MySQL, SQLite, Postgres, Drizzle), including non-relational databases, database alternatives like NoSQL stores, and database tools such as Gearman. We are not focusing on any one project, and hope to see representatives from a variety of open source database projects attend. As usual I am one of the main organizers of Open SQL Camp (in previous years, Baron Schwartz, Selena Deckelmann and Eric Day have been main organizers too; this year Bradley Kuzsmaul is the other main organizer). The target audience …

It was funny to wake up to this article on "
Marten Mickos says open source doesn't have to be fully open".

I can remember the morning of the first keynotes for the MySQL Conference after Sun had acquired MySQL. You have Jonathan Swartz and Rich Green delivering keynotes where the underlying message was "we continue to allow MySQL to run its own business".

Why was this?

Because Marten was going to announce the close sourcing of part of the MySQL Server. For years there were conversations around "if we did XYZ could we take out a critical...". These conversations were always met with a dead silence. The codebase was neither modular, nor did any of the developers resonate …

Julie Bort of Networkworld.com has an interview with Mårten Mickos of Eucalyptus, formerly of MySQL. In MySQL times it seemed (to me at least) that most users never realized Mårten and his management team were taking MySQL increasingly into a closed source direction. (Maybe I'm just stupid myself, but at least personally I had not noticed this until after I started working for the company.) In this interview Mårten at least comes squarely out of the closet and is defending the model.

Julie makes a good journalistic effort of reporting on the topic from a neutral point of view. Alas, sometimes that approach just makes things fuzzier. So let me try to make one thing clear: Open core may be a good business model, but open core is not open …

Translation of chapter 5 which describes alternate methods for searching problem query just published. It starts like:

Chapter 5. Alternate methods for finding problem query.

I already wrote about using of general query log requires resources.
Part of the problem can be solved if use new feature of MySQL 5.1:
online logging which allows to turn general query log to on or to off
without stopping the MySQL server.

Unfortunately this doesn't always work: you can have old
version of MySQL server which has not such a feature, general query log
can contain very large amount of information, so you can just miss the
problem in thousands of correct queries, you can have some other own
reason.

But what to do if you can not use general query log?

…

At SQLstream, we have no doubt that streaming SQL and stream computing will be a key part of the next-generation enterprise infrastructure, but we are less certain how we fit into trends such as "Big Data" and "NoSQL".

Taking the terms absolutely literally, we aren't either. We can't be "Big Data" because we do out damnedest to process data as fast as we receive it, in memory. I guess "Fast Data" would be a better word for what we do. And we can't be "NoSQL" because we're the biggest cheerleaders for industry-standard SQL you'll find anywhere outside Redwood Shores or Almaden.

But we founded the company because we foresaw …

Translation of chapter 5 which describes alternate methods for searching problem query just published. It starts like:

Chapter 5. Alternate methods for finding problem query.

I already wrote about using of general query log requires resources.
Part of the problem can be solved if use new feature of MySQL 5.1:
online logging which allows to turn general query log to on or to off
without stopping the MySQL server.

Unfortunately this doesn't always work: you can have old
version of MySQL server which has not such a feature, general query log
can contain very large amount of information, so you can just miss the
problem in thousands of correct queries, you can have some other own
reason.

But what to do if you can not use general query log?

…

This will be a quick tutorial on looking at on-time flight analysis. This material will be part of a lab for a class on InfiniDB that I am developing. The information is from Data.Gov Website and you are free to follow the steps presented.

What I want to know is what flight from a certain airport arrives at my local airport on time the most frequently. Traveling from LAX to DFW can often be a combination of cancellations, flight delays, and being the nth plane in line for takeoff. So what is the best flight choice for that route?

The first step is getting the data. And is is available for free from Airline On-Time Performance and Causes of Flight Delays. Be sure to select the check box for documentation so that there will be a readme.html to described the file …

Here is one, but not all of the culprits in the codebase:

  /*
    Count warnings for all inserts.
    For single line insert, generate an error if try to set a NOT NULL field
    to NULL.
  */                         
  session->count_cuted_fields= ((values_list.elements == 1 &&
                                 !ignore) ?
                                CHECK_FIELD_ERROR_FOR_NULL :
                                CHECK_FIELD_WARN);

With MySQL you have to keep your mind firmly in the state of "if I was MyISAM, what would I do?".

MyISAM is the default engine for MySQL. It handles everything from temporary tables on disk to the authentication tables. It lays out its rows, for the most part, in the order written. Updates are written in place when possible, and any sort of traffic beyond INSERT and DELETE will fragment it. Its …

There was another acquisition involving open source software recently when Consona bought Compiere, but what is perhaps most striking about the deal from an open source software perspective is how little it and the Compiere community mattered in the deal.

By most accounts, including that of fellow open source ERP player xTuple CEO Ned Lilly, who offers an interesting and accurate depiction of Compiere’s changes, acknowledge the movement away from community that occurred over the last few years at Compiere. As discussed in our own recent report on the deal, we are also somewhat skeptical over the fate of what is left of Compiere’s open source community, even though Consona plans to …

By now you know that there is a MySQL Track during next week’s ODTUG Kaleidoscope in Washington, DC. Ronald Bradford and I organized the schedule at the last minute (Ronald did a lot of the work!). It was difficult to fill a schedule with 19 sessions that are either 1 hour or 1.5 hours long, and to do it I ended up with three presentations.

At each presentation I will be giving away a copy of The MySQL Administrator’s Bible, so be sure to show up! All MySQL track sessions are in Maryland C, and all times are Eastern.

On Monday, June 28th from 4 pm – 5:30 pm I will be presenting …