Reading “Test Center: Slacker databases break all the old rules” has finally inspired me to write this post, which I’ve been meaning to do for a while. The title of my post may be bold, but it is just one version of how things may go moving forward (and was meant to grab your attention). :)

First off, a few issues I have with the article mentioned above:

• “…tacking the two letters “db” onto a pile of code that breaks with the traditional relational model.” - Since when does a database need to be relational? Sure, relational databases are the most popular, but they are only a subset of all the possible database types (let’s not forget hierarchical or tuple stores).
• “None of them is right for everyone, and all of them are completely …

A forum for each topic is tiresome. Someone made an improvement, and then you have forums where you can ask pretty much anything.
But also that is not as general purpose as the concept of LazyWeb. When you need help, you just want to stand up and ask.
…

As you might know by now, libmysqld, the deeply embedded version of MySQL, has reapperared in MySQL 5.1, having been gone in version 5.0. If you are curious about libmysqld in general, then feel free to pop by this free live webinar, hosted by noone else but yours truly:
http://www.mysql.com/news-and-events/web-seminars/index.html
(Look for the webex with the ISV and OEM ... Deeply embedded blurb, and you''ll find it). You need to preregister for it.

What I was going to say a few words about here though, was on the performance of libmysqld. The code in libmysqld is the same as in the mysqld server, basically, but there are some shortcuts, and above all, there is no overhead of Client / Server communication. I decided to try this out a bit, using a very simple application, doing INSERT, UPDATE and SELECT on a simple MyISAM table. Note that as the overhead of MyISAM itself is so small, the performance benefits here will be …

MySQL Cluster (NDB Storage Engine) is a shared-nothing distributed in-memory database with support for disk-data tables as well. It provides a DB environment with high availability, near-linear scalability, realtime performance, automatic and user defined data partitioning, load balancing and transparent failover.

The data is distributed using a partitioning key (hash calculated on primary key as default) so the performance is especially great for primary key lookups and parallel data access.

read more

UPDATE developer_day_signup
SET name=YOU!
WHERE (attending_mysql_uc=True OR attending_percona_conference=True)
      AND shape_future_database=True;

A rotten little apple by Ashley Harding

Apple has had a nasty Safari bug since December which breaks SmugMug, Facebook, Gmail, and lots of US banks.

3 months later, it’s still not fixed. Your only option is to use Firefox if you’re affected.

Apple’s known about the problem since December, and has lots of internal bugs on the issue (30+ I last heard). (For my Apple readers, here’s our bug on …

Alpha version 5.08 of the BLOB streaming engine for MySQL has been released. You can download the source code from www.blobstreaming.org/download. The documentation has also been updated.

What's new in 5.08:

• All PBMS data is stored under a 'pbms' directory in the MySQL server's data directory rather than in the database directories them selves.
• This version now builds with Drizzle and can be loaded as a 'Blobcontainer' plug-in.
• Added the possibility of storing BLOB metadata along with the BLOB in the repository.
• Added the possibility of assigning an alias to a BLOB, which can then be used to retrieve the BLOB instead of using the engine generated URL.
• Added an updateable system table 'pbms_metadata_header' to control which HTTP headers are stored as metadata.
• Added an updateable …

Yes, I've changed my counting... I'm having keeping track of which day is which so better to use the UC as my end point I figured. So Day 24 to the UC it is...

London, Ontario, in a coffee shop poaching wireless... Well, I hoped to report that Kingston, Ontario had welcomed me with open arms last night and was a giant success. I was hoping for pictures of students running after me as if I was a long-lost Beatle, or perhaps Kaj. However, that was not to be the case.

Unfortunately the event had to be cancelled. Not an auspicious beginning to the trip for sure.

However, we are now 24 days to the MySQL Users Conference and I am 4,250km from San Francisco. So what are the highlights from the upcoming conference?

First I'd like to point out, as so many others have done so, that this year we will have a MySQL Camp run by your very own MySQL …

I am passing this along — I am not sure if most folks reading this can make it, as it is last-minute and in the Boston area, but I figured I’d let people know that the New England Database Society exists. It’s free, sponsored by Sun (and has been for years, long before Sun bought MySQL), and is hosted by my college database professor, Mitch Cherniack. (To that end, I should probably make sure to promote the Boston User Group here more often! I keep forgetting…)

You can find information on how to be a part of the mailing list at http://www.cs.brown.edu/sites/neds/

The next New England Database Society will be held on Friday, March 27 and the speaker is Christian Jensen of Aalborg University.

===================================================================
[N]ew [E]ngland [D]atabase …

As you probably now if you reading this blog, MySQL does not support SQL sequences. Logically, it is very easy to implement something equivalent to a sequence using transaction with InnoDB with a simple 2 columns table, name and value. The only problem is that a sequence update is usually composed of two SQL statements, a SELECT to read the value and an UPDATE to increment it. Fairly you would say, use a transaction to wrap the 2 statements together but then, you are probably aware that you cannot manage transactions in a function with MySQL. A clean sequence function seemed out of reach up to recently, when Brian Morin showed me a trick that solves the issues. Here how to create a get_next_val function to a sequence.

delimiter //
drop function if exists true_function //
create function true_function(p_param int) returns int
  deterministic
  sql security invoker
  return true
//

drop function if exists get_next_value//
create …