Recently we have released Workbench 5.2.4 Alpha. This version has some new features, and amongst them there is Workbench Administrator plugin or WBA plugin for short.

The plugin aims to ease the managing process of server instances. What we offer with WBA is a simple way to check status, configure and control one server instance. Some parts will resemble discontinued MySQL Administrator.

And here is a short summary of what we will have in WBA:

• Start/Stop server
• Edit server configuration (my.cnf)
• Manage user accounts
• Monitor user connections
• Status/Server variables browsing
• Log browsing
• Dump/Restore

In this alpha we have implemented a subset, which targets local usage only. Remote management and administration is upcoming. The subset includes:

• Add new Server Profiles
• Start/Stop the Server
…

Recently I decided to build my own forum software so I'm able to better control spam posts and make posting easier than it ever was.

All user accounts including passwords were imported into my new database. Only the name of the permanent cookie has changed so you might have to login once before posting now.

Email addresses are nowhere displayed, except for the settings page where you only see the more compact options, including a checkbox to turn email notification on replies on and off.

I'm going to add some formatting buttons to the posting form, and maybe some pulldown for smilies. Currently you can only post plain text messages, which is sufficient in many cases.

I'm also going to add support for creating Subversion revision URLs, automatically created if you type

r1234

. Same goes for issue ids when you want to refer to a bug report.

I hope you like …

Ever wanted to find a text string in a whole database? Using a nightly build, now you are able to do that, even your whole server can be selected. Just press Ctrl+Shift+F to call the "table tools" dialog.

The maintenance dialog was refactored recently to allow different tabs and actions. Probably you have ideas for further tabs here - please post them in our feature tracker!

So, it turned out fixing the Workbench crash on Snow Leopard wasn’t very hard. Took a little time to find out what was causing the crash but, once that was found, the fix was quick.

The next releases of both branches — MySQL Workbench 5.1.18 this week and 5.2.3 alpha later on — will have proper support for Mac OS X 10.6

For whoever might be interested, the bug was caused by what seems to be a slight change in how object/NSView copies are handed in Cocoa. NSCollectionView items are populated by copying a “prototype” object. It seems that somehow, duplication of that object included the fields of child objects as well in Leopard, but not in Snow Leopard. The object copies were incomplete and when they were accessed, it ended up attempting to create a C++ string out of nil.

Things are growing yet again at work and with it the number of people needed to keep things flowing smoothly. This time it’s the Sales Engineer team that needs a new person, working in the Baltimore/Washington area (our home office):

Responsibilities

• Provide exemplary pre-sales technical expertise through technical and product presentations, product demonstrations, pilot implementations, beta program administration, consistent communication, and on-going technical consultation.
• Translate complex technical problems for non-technical clients as well as translating non-technical specifications into precise technical requirements.
• Meet with clients to evaluate their current systems and needs and make recommendations for software and hardware and integration.
• Travel approximately 30% in support of sales and customer activities.
• Respond to RFIs, RFPs and serve as …

Most wished by HeidiSQL users: having more than one query tab. Just implemented that, trying to adapt most nice tabbed interface details:
* Create new tab with Ctrl+T or by doubleclicking the empty tab space
* Close tab either by clicking a close button or with Ctrl+F4




Not the newest one, but also not in the recent 4.0 final yet: A completely rewritten editor for table structures. Replaces various legacy dialogs in one powerful GUI, with even more functions than before:
* In-memory editing until you press "Save"
* Grid like editing of all column properties
* Advanced table options gathered on a seperate tabsheet
* CREATE and ALTER code for preview and copy+paste purposes



Give it a try and download a …

Recently I tried out Google Analytics on heidisql.com for 2 weeks - nice statistics, really. But for sporadic statistics I thought that it's not worth giving each and every visitor a cookie and some dubious JavaScript, spying out several personal information. So I removed the Analytics webbug again now.

Additionally we had a Ohloh badge somewhere at the bottom of the page. I decided to also remove that, although that didn't send a cookie, but slowed down page loading significantly, and it seemed not to be of much interest.

So I am proud to have heidisql.com free of web bugs again. Of course, that doesn't apply to the ads at the very top of the page besides the HeidiSQL logo.

Btw, if you're worried about your privacy online, the Ghostery Firefox plugin is definitely for you.

According to the MailChimp blog there’s a new program in place at Gmail that allows images in a message to be turned on by default with the following requirements:

• There has to be authentication in place (either SPF or DKIM).
• The recipient has to have sent at least 2 messages in the past to the sender.

Now that second one can be a challenge since a lot of senders do not use a reply-to address that their customers are sending to (in fact many use a noreply address), meaning that none of their subscribers will accumulate two sends and therefore never see images on by default.

Essentially senders need to start using a reply-to address that customers can use, and ideally one that they would otherwise use. As an example a support@ address would be used independently of the mailing, adding the …

News providers, like most content providers, are interested in having their content seen by as many people as possible. But unlike many news organizations, whose primary concern may be monetizing their content, National Public Radio is interested in turning it into a resource for people to use in new and novel ways as well. Daniel Jacobson is in charge making that content available to developers and end users in a wide variety of formats, and has been doing so using an Open API that NPR developed specifically for that purpose. Daniel will talk about how the project is going at OSCON, the O'Reilly Open Source Convention. Here's a preview of what he'll be talking about.

James Turner: Can you start by explaining what NPR Digital Media is …

As you may have heard, we're switching to a new release model with the upcoming MySQL 5.4 release.

If you are curious to learn more about what will change in the way in which future versions MySQL will be developed and released, make sure to attend our next MySQL University session about The New MySQL Release Model on Thursday, 11th of June, 14:00 UTC. Tomas Ulin, our director of MySQL server development will go through the planned changes and would also like to get your input and feedback on these changes.

We're using …