This is the 123rd edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs. Welcome.

Let’s begin with some SQL Server, where it was a week of technical tips. Alexander Kuznetsov looks at defensive database programming. “In most cases LIKE conditions should by followed by ESCAPE clauses,” he asserts, continuing, “You have a choice: you can either have a CHECK constraint disallow special characters, or you can fix the procedure,” thus error-proofing your logic. Readers Alejandro Mesa and Adam Machanic suggest a couple refinements.

On …

Sun Microsystems slashes jobs in major restructuring. SpringSource gets Groovy with G2One. Novell goes after Red Hat. Sonatype confirms Marc Visser as new CEO. Neil Young’s new car. And more.

Press releases
Sun Microsystems Aligns Business with Global Economic Climate and Amplifies Growth Opportunities Across Open Source Platforms Sun Microsystems

SpringSource Acquires G2One Inc SpringSource

Novell Announces New Program to Aid Transition to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Novell

Zenoss Adds …

I recently found myself wishing for an async library for MySQL. My goal is to be able to fire off queries to a group of federated servers in parallel and aggregate the results in my code.

With the standard client (DBD::mysql), I'd have to query the servers one at a time. If there are 10 servers and each query takes 0.5 seconds, my code would stall for 5 seconds. But by using an async library, I could fire off all the queries and fetch the results as they become available. The overall wait time should not be much more than 0.5 seconds.

While I found little evidence of anyone doing this in practice, my search led me to the perl-mysql-async project on Google Code. It's a pure-Perl implementation of the MySQL 4.1 protocol and an asyncronous client that uses …

After almost 3 years working in Support then Training, it's time to move on. I haven't blogged much in a while, but it's something I plan to work on more now I sit on the other side.

After almost 3 years working in Support then Training, it's time to move on. I haven't blogged much in a while, but it's something I plan to work on more now I sit on the other side.

Hearing that the MySQL database server is delivering corrupt data is not how I like to start the day, but that was the greeting when I arrived to work a couple days ago.

The claim was that an INSERT...SELECT query buried in a batch process was producing a different result than running the same query manually via the mysql client.

Since this is a production system, and a busy one at that, we don't keep the general log enabled. Restarting the server to enable logging is not an option during peak loads either.

Luckily, I stumbled on a DTrace script out there in internet land and it let me see exactly what was happening. I wish I can remember where I got it so I could give due credit. Here is the script:

#!/usr/sbin/dtrace -qs
pid$1::*dispatch_command*:entry
{
printf("%d::%s\n",tid,copyinstr(arg2));
}

Thats it. Just execute it on your Solaris 10 …

Hearing that the MySQL database server is delivering corrupt data is not how I like to start the day, but that was the greeting when I arrived to work a couple days ago.

The claim was that an INSERT...SELECT query buried in a batch process was producing a different result than running the same query manually via the mysql client.

Since this is a production system, and a busy one at that, we don't keep the general log enabled. Restarting the server to enable logging is not an option during peak loads either.

Luckily, I stumbled on a DTrace script out there in internet land and it let me see exactly what was happening. I wish I can remember where I got it so I could give due credit. Here is the script:

#!/usr/sbin/dtrace -qs
pid$1::*dispatch_command*:entry
{
printf("%d::%s\n",tid,copyinstr(arg2));
}

Thats it. Just execute it on your Solaris 10 …

Last year O’Reilly released the 2nd Edition of the  MySQL Cookbook by Paul DuBois.  You can read my review here.

Whenever a publisher releases a 2nd Edition of a book, you know it was well received the first time around.  So that’s a good sign that the material has gotten people buying.  I would say in the computer reference and howto market, that’s a very good indication that the material is well written and relevant.  I certainly found it to be the case with this title.

If you’re looking for a quick & no nonsense howto book on MySQL development, look no further.  The book focuses on Ruby, Perl, PHP, Python and Java as examples.  So if you’re doing development, specifically web development, you’ll get a …

This document here details on how you can do a checkout and build the MySQL codebase from the Bazaar repository.

Some additional points for OpenSolaris 2008.11 :

When you execute $ BUILD/autorun.sh, you might get errors complaining of 'aclocal' and 'automake' not found:

BUILD/autorun.sh[23]: aclocal: not found [No such file or directory]
Can't execute aclocal

Checking for the autotools, I found that 'aclocal' and 'automake' was installed in /usr/bin, as the following binaries:


/usr/bin/aclocal-1.10: executable /usr/perl5/bin/perl script
/usr/bin/aclocal-1.9: executable /usr/perl5/bin/perl script

and similarly for 'automake'.

To get around …

This document here details on how you can do a checkout and build the MySQL codebase from the Bazaar repository.

Some additional points for OpenSolaris 2008.11 :

When you execute $ BUILD/autorun.sh, you might get errors complaining of 'aclocal' and 'automake' not found:

BUILD/autorun.sh[23]: aclocal: not found [No such file or directory]
Can't execute aclocal

Checking for the autotools, I found that 'aclocal' and 'automake' was installed in /usr/bin, as the following binaries:


/usr/bin/aclocal-1.10: executable /usr/perl5/bin/perl script
/usr/bin/aclocal-1.9: executable /usr/perl5/bin/perl script

and similarly for 'automake'.

To get around …