I’ve worked with every release of Microsoft Excel, and I know it takes effort to keep up to date with certain releases. Clearly, the Data Analysis eXpression (DAX) Language introduced in Excel 2010 went unnoticed by many, which was sad. DAX is truly a powerful extension to the analytical and modeling approaches in Microsoft Excel.

I’d like to recommend Microsoft Excel 2013 Building Data Models with PowerPivot to those who haven’t learned how to use DAX in Excel 2010, 2011, or 2013. DAX works with tables but if you don’t use tables, I guess you can skip DAX …

It's again that time of the year. Analysts are spending oceans of words to predict the future, companies are making plans for the next year and people are resting and enjoying the break with their families. To me, this is the perfect time to reflect on my choices, the direction I'm headed to and consider if I still love what I do.

At the beginning of the year I decided to join MongoDB (formerly 10gen). The more I think about it, the more I realize I've been wrong. Yes, it's been the worst decision in my life not to join MongoDB when I was first offered the opportunity years ago. At that time an insightful friend asked me to consider the opportunity. At that time I didn't see what I see today.

I didn't see the …

It's again that time of the year. Analysts are spending oceans of words to predict the future, companies are making plans for the next year and people are resting and enjoying the break with their families. To me, this is the perfect time to reflect on my choices, the direction I'm headed to and consider if I still love what I do.

At the beginning of the year I decided to join MongoDB (formerly 10gen). The more I think about it, the more I realize I've been wrong. Yes, it's been the worst decision in my life not to join MongoDB when I was first offered the opportunity years ago. At that time an insightful friend asked me to consider the opportunity. At that time I didn't see what I see today.

I didn't see the …

I like the image of this city of Mesa Verde. It’s fascinating to see how ancient cities were built, especially as an inhabitant of one of the worlds largest cities today, New York. I’m a long time relational database guy. I worked at scores of dot-coms in the 90′s as an old-guard Oracle DBA, and […]

Dear MySQL users,

MySQL Connector/Net 6.8.3, a new version of the all-managed .NET driver for MySQL has been released. This is a GA release for 6.8.x and can be used for production environments.

It is appropriate for use with MySQL server versions 5.0-5.6

It is now available in source and binary form from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/net/#downloads and mirror sites (note that not all mirror sites may be up to date at this point-if you can't find this version on some mirror, please try again later or choose another download site.)

The 6.8.3 version of MySQL Connector/Net has support for Entity Framework 6.0

The release is available to download at http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/net/#downloads

Enjoy and …

It has been a busy week for the Pythonic MySQL Team at Oracle: MySQL Utilities 1.3.6 and a brand new Utilities 1.4.1 Alpha has been release which includes Fabric. Yes, and of course, the one binding them all: Connector/Python v1.1.4 has been released as GA (General Available). Check out the Change History if you want to keep up with what is being added and changed.

New features found in v1.1:

• Important: Connector/Python will not work with Python v2.4 or v2.5. Yes, I consider this a feature.
• Connector/Python comes with it’s own …

The MySQL Windows Experience Team is proud to announce the release of MySQL Notifier version 1.1.5, the  latest addition to the MySQL Installer for Windows.

MySQL Notifier 1.1.5 introduces the following features:

• The MySQL Utilities can now be opened from MySQL Notifier if installed separately from MySQL Workbench (it is no longer bundled with MySQL Workbench 6.x).
• Added Workbench connections edition capability right from the Monitor MySQL Server Instance window of the MySQL Notifier (accessed through Actions > Manage Monitored Items… > Add… > MySQL Instance). Any of the listed MySQL Workbench connections can be right-clicked and a new “Edit Connection” context menu is available for users to edit the Workbench connection properties.
• Changed the way the Workbench connections and servers files are monitored, now the Notifier detects automatically …

Dear MySQL users,

MySQL Connector/Net 6.8.2, a new version of the all-managed .NET driver for MySQL has been released. This is a RC release for 6.8.x and it's not recommended for production environments.

It is appropriate for use with MySQL server versions 5.0-5.6

It is now available in source and binary form from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/net/#downloads and mirror sites (note that not all mirror sites may be up to date at this point-if you can't find this version on some mirror, please try again later or choose another download site.)

The 6.8.2 version of MySQL Connector/Net has support for Entity Framework 6.0

The release is available to download at http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/net/#downloads

…

Percona founder and CEO Peter Zaitsev delivers the opening keynote at Percona Live 2013 in Santa Clara, Calif.

MySQL gurus from Oracle, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, Yelp (and more) have submitted papers and will speak at the third annual Percona Live MySQL Conference and Expo 2014 in sunny Santa Clara, California this coming April 1-4.

If you attended last April’s Percona Live MySQL Conference and Expo – and/or last month’s Percona Live London 2013 conference – then you understand the value of learning from some of the world’s best and brightest system architects and developers. So you might want to consider registering now and take advantage of …

MariaDB CONNECT Storage Engine allows to access heterogeneous datasourses. This includes various file formats. But this also includes ODBC accessible datasources The CONNECT Storage Engine ODBC table type allows to access SQLite, Excel, SQL Server or Oracle databases. Some nice features of the ODBC CONNECT table type are: - Auto discovery of table structure. This [...]