The other day I was explaining options to someone who wanted to know about archiving data in MySQL. “So,” he said, “I might have to code my app to look for the data in two places?” The disadvantage of this is that his app might be more complex. Another disadvantage is that it might take two queries – if you look for a user in the usual location and it’s not there, you have to look for it elsewhere.

If you haven't heard of Digsby yet, you have probably been living in some kind of a virtual cave or have no friends. Digsby is a multi-network instant messenger application, similar to Trillian, Pidgin (GAIM), or Miranda. I said 'similar', so what makes Digsy special? Reviews I read so far don't give the real reasons and don't dive into the features in depth. Instead, you get a standard load of marketing BS and in the end to you, the user, Digsby may end up being "yet another IM program." Some reviews describe certain features, but so far I haven't seen one that highlighted THE MAIN REASON why Digsby is different. And may I preface it with: finally somebody got a clue. I never before wanted to write about any other IM client, which already indicates that on the "this is the most awesome meter ever" meter, Digsby is floating somewhere at the top. …

Do they exist? Do they make you money (or in the case of Firebird meaningfully extend your community)? Would you be unhappy if support would be dropped in PHP 5.3, in PHP 6.0? Do you have ressources to prevent this from happening, by taking ownership of the code in question? Are you interested in ensuring the availability of solid support in PDO? While I do not think support will be dropped in PHP 5.3 (well for FrontBaseSQL I have a hard time standing up in defense like I did for the other 3), there is a good chance this will happen in PHP 6.0. Without PDO support your users will be left more or less in the dust. So if you work for one of these vendors, please talk to who ever who can prevent this. If you know …

In what I think must be MySQL’s first time in the Philippines, there will be a presence there next week. Well, its not the first time, but in terms of a community/developer event, I think it might be. The Sun Tech Days is happening from 17-19 June 2008, in the Shangri-La Makati.

Besides MySQL, expect great talks on NetBeans, GlassFish, OpenSolaris, and so much more. I’ll be the guy walking around in the MySQL shirt, so feel free to stop me and ask questions. Its exciting for me, as we’ve not really paid much attention to the Philippines, in terms of community growth (and the Philippines is in the APAC region!).

This isn’t a free event (its 1,000 PHP = ~USD23), and registration should still be available. If you’d like to meet up, and talk MySQL, shoot me an email at colinATmysqlDOTcom or …

Well I don't quite know either (yet ;-) but I spotted a hint: his LinkedIn profile now says "President at NimbusDB", with stated goal "To build a database in the clouds that scales to 1000X disk-based database systems." Sounds good.

Which Jim? Jim Starkey, most recently known from MySQL's Falcon storage engine.

I’m going to OSCON in July, and I know that just about everyone I know who is a participant in this crazy life we call IT (or web 2.0, or whatever it’s called now), is flying to a conference or something in 2008. I’m starting to notice more and more posts like this one, so if you can avoid it, don’t put anything in a checked bag that you can’t afford to lose, and avoid US Airways, and pass it on, because when you see the list of things they don’t cover in their lost baggage policy, you’ll suddenly feel like you’re lucky to still have anything you ever checked with your bags.

Welcome the the 101st edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs.

This edition was originally claimed by Ward Pond for his SQL Server Blog. Unfortunately, Ward is, in his own words, “dealing with the aftermath of a burst appendix,” which is a very good reason not to spend your time at the computer. Ward, heal up soon! We’ll see you on LB before too long.

In lieu of the normal Log Buffer, I throw it open to our readers. Please leave a comment mentioning your favourite database blog items from the week that was, and anything else you care to say about them.

LB will be back to normal next Friday. See you then!

After a period of inactivity I was hacking back on a Drupal project, I had taken a mysql dump from a production platform and imported into my local dev setup, just to have some realistic data.

All of a sudden some forms started failing with the following error:


user warning: There is no 'user'@'nonlocalhost registered query: insert into blah (stuff,morestuff) values (x,y) in /var/vhost/drupal-tree/includes/database.mysql.inc on line 172.


My Drupal data connection was correct and working for selects etc.. only a limited set of inserts failed.

After some debugging I realised that the error was not Drupal related, running the same query on my MySQL console gave the same error.


ERROR 1449 (HY000): There is no 'user'@'nonlocalhost' registered


The error came from a trigger on the table I was inserting data into that had been created on the …

A common misunderstanding seems to be that the only way to increase the available “paper space” for a diagram is by increasing the size of the paper. But there is another way to do that, which is in the Model -> Diagram Size dialog, where you can set the number of pages your diagram has, vertically and horizontally (perhaps it’s not very obvious to first time users, so we’ll be working on making it more easily accessible).

Another recurring issue is that of printing in the community version. Direct printing is …

La registrazione del webinar e le slide sono presenti qui.
Di seguito riporto la sezione di domande e risposte:
Q from Ivo: Tutte le considerazioni sulla scalabilita' fin qui individuate sono valide anche per la versione community di MySQL?
A: si

Q from Alex: Mysql Proxy per la suddivisione delle richieste lettura scittura è ad oggi stabile ?
A: MySQL Proxy e' ancora in fase alfa e non e' consigliato l'utilizzo in produzione.

Q from Massimo: Qual'e' il metodo migliore per il backup incrementale di un db?
A: E' necessario attivara il binary log ed effettuare le operazioni di FLUSH LOG al momento del backup.

Q from Mauro: Ci possono essere applicativi web che inseriscono dei dati nel DB, e che subito rileggono i dati inseriti. Dato  che la replicazione è …